When Trash Attacks

Ewww, really? That's the picture to accompany this post?

My kids groan and say I can spiritualize anything. True. This morning it was my wrestling match with the trash truck.

Lately I've felt like my life is pretty much up to my neck. Commitments and circumstances have made me feel pretty overwhelmed, and some recent health problems have topped it off. Part of trying to get things into balance again is taking back up the walking that I really love. It allows me to listen to worship music or a Bible study podcast. I can pray or think for 30 minutes out in the fresh air without any interruptions.

So. This brings me to the trash truck.

I'm walking along, thinking, enjoying the fresh air after a couple of brief sprinkles (sorry, Buffalo), when a trash truck pulls ahead of me. I've just begun a fresh block of sidewalk, and it's an extra long block. The trash truck is on the same side of the street as I am, and the driver is stopping every house to pick up cans and dump them overhead into the truck. I quickly realize I'm in trouble, because he and I are at the same pace. I get a few steps ahead when he pulls in front of me and, as the hydraulic arms put each can back down, a burst of foul garbage air belches into my immediate future.

Suddenly I laugh out loud. This is my LIFE!!  This objectifies my tug of war with my circumstances and commitments...just when I think I pull ahead, here come the challenges. It feels like I will never be able to escape them! Plus,it's just an awkward thing to keep pace with the garbage man, y'all.

I look ahead to the end of the block..and see another block to my usual route which is probably the truck's next destination on its route. I decide to walk much more quickly and see if I can pull ahead. We're neck and neck for a few houses, but then I break ahead. As I push myself to walk faster than I have in awhile because of my health problem, I realize I don't have the pain I thought I would. The truck falls farther and farther behind. My air is clear again and the noise fades. Finally, I make it to the end of the second block, cross the street, and the truck turns and disappears.

So. This brings me to the spiritual lesson.

 Job said to him had been appointed "months of futility" (Job 7:3). That meant that what God had allowed him to suffer would come to an end. He hadn't been appointed futility for the rest of his life, but for a certain season. We know that God restored Job's losses and blessed his future more than his latter. The trash truck fell behind. Job pulled ahead.

Paul said he counted all things as garbage (grin)  that he might win Christ. He said "forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" Philippians 3:13, 14. The trash truck fell behind. Paul pulled ahead.

When trash attacks, pull ahead. Doing so will push you to grow, and you may be surprised to find strength you didn't know you had. You may never had known it had you not been keeping pace in the garbage race. Pretty soon your air will be clean again, and your trash truck will fade from view.

I've now spiritualized the trash pick up. You're welcome.

BOOK REVIEW: The Underground Girls of Kabul

Hidden in plain sight are the bacha posh of Afghanistan--young girls chosen by their families to be boys during their childhood years in order to improve the family's social standing. This is not a transgender experiment, some sort of odd sexual trend, but rather an adaptation to a culture which values boys and crushes girls. Jenny Nordberg, in The Underground Girls of Kabul, explores this fascinating phenomenon.

Threading through the book is her budding friendship with Azita, a woman who defies many of Afghanistan's edicts about women being hidden away in burkas behind the closed doors of their homes. Azita holds political office and is devoted to improving her country. However, because she has had no daughters, she and her husband have chosen to make their youngest daughter into a boy. Although others in the city know these boys are really girls, they choose to accept them as boys, allowing these families improved social standing: a family with no sons is frowned upon, and the wife is mocked. Yet Azita suffers many of the difficulties of Afghan women, including an arranged marriage to an abusive husband.

Nordberg profiles a number of bacha posh from a variety of circumstances, highlighting the perhaps heretofore unknown prevalence of this strange cultural dynamic. As she does, she remarks upon the phenomenon of bacha posh as, really, an underground revolt against the patriarchal system of Afghanistan.

I found this book very interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which was simply learning more about the social climate of this area of the world. As someone with a graduate degree in psychology, I found the idea of bacha posh very curious and interesting. I doubt that anyone could read this book and not come away with a new compassion for the extreme hardships women face under these political, religious, and social edicts.

I received this book for free from Waterbrook Multnomah in exchange for my review.