Monday Morning Confessional

Last updated on: October 28, 2013 at 7:51 am by Tim Suttle

Monday Morning Confessional 2013-10-28T07:51:27-06:00 Tim Suttle

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I confess that I sometimes cuss during football games and basketball games, but only if I really care who wins. I confess that I never feel the need to cuss during baseball games – and it’s not for lack of caring; yet more evidence that baseball is the morally superior sport. I further confess that I cuss in the car, but only if I’m in a hurry, and only if I’m not praying at the time. Car praying is a pretty big deal for me, and not just in order to keep myself from cussing.

While I’m on the subject of cussing, I confess that I had a good joke in the sermon yesterday and it really didn’t land. I hear a couple of good laughs, I’m pretty sure they are the only ones who got it. I was talking about Adam & Eve and how judgment extended to their relationships with themselves, each other, the creation, as well as their relationship to God (and we usually only focus on the latter). Anyway I made the joke “that’s where the phrase damn the man power to the people) comes from. Get it? Damn the man? Adam was damned by God? Yeah, it sailed wide to the left during the sermon, too… a good reminder that a pun is almost always a bad idea.

I confess that I believe, should the Chiefs go 16-0 during the season (and I do not think they will), everyone will cry for an asterisk because they have the easiest schedule in all of football. However, I just want to remind everyone that the ‘72 Dolphins went 16-0 with an incredibly easy schedule. There was no other team in their division with a winning record that year, and the Dolphins didn’t play a single division winner in the regular season. In the playoffs they: 1) beat Cleveland (a 2nd place team), in Miami, 2) went on the road to beat Pittsburg – a really good win, and 3) beat the Redskins in the championship, also a really good win. All in all, they had one of the easiest schedules that season. I’m not saying the Chiefs will go undefeated. I’m just saying that if they do… no asterisk necessary.

My Enneagram daily email today read as follows: “As Threes continually postpone dealing with their real feelings, they begin to have trouble accessing them. They become distanced from their own feelings and needs and no longer know who they are.” I confess that I think I needed to hear this today. I confess that I often tell myself, “I don’t have time to feel that emotion right now,” or else I’ll try to avoid certain subjects in order to elude the emotions that are inevitably attached. I’m not sure if that is good or bad, but I think it’s healthy to know that I’m doing it. Postponing emotions is big for me. My guess is that I do end up distancing myself from the source, then having trouble accessing them (or at least assessing them). I know that for me, a healthy pattern involves naming my emotions, feeling them deeply, then letting them go and moving on.

Speaking of postponing emotions, I confess that I got notes back from my editor at Zondervan on the manuscript I turned in a couple of months back. I have not yet opened the files because I’ve been postponing the ensuing emotional $#!/-storm that will ensue. I confess that I also cuss while postponing emotions. It’s an incredibly vulnerable thing to read someone’s critique of your writing, even when you know that they are on your side and are only trying to help you make it better.

I confess that my wife had a significant cancer scare this past year. To add insult to serious injury, we were recently dropped by our health insurance company. She’s been working like crazy trying to find coverage… (try getting health insurance with melanoma on your record). I don’t even know how many times we been denied, appealed, and denied again. After months of trying, it has become clear that the local exchange is really our only hope of keeping our family on the same insurance plan together. I’m really grateful for the Affordable Care Act, and I know that we’d be paying out the wazoo if we didn’t have that option. That being said, could we please make the website work? Seriously, this has to go down as one of the all-time worst in terms of high-profile screw ups.

Okay friends, I made my confession. Now it’s time for you to make yours.

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