Discomfort

While still in my pajamas yesterday morning, I carried the laundry downstairs, holding Tuga in my hand.  His rigid little ears poked into my fingers and palm. I tried to shift him to a better spot but it was impossible to carry the basket and the bunny without a little discomfort.

“Could you just not?” I asked him, but he didn’t answer.

The lesson was easy to see. Sorrow is uncomfortable.

In today’s society, we are fairly averse to discomfort. We desire to be always at ease.

Have a headache? Take some ibuprofen.

Are you cold? Grab a blanket or a sweater, or turn up the heat.

Too hot? That’s why God invented A/C.

Plastic rabbit ears poking your hand? Put the silly thing down. It’s a dumb exercise anyway.

C.S. Lewis, in The Problem of Pain, said,

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us. We ‘have all we want’ is a terribly saying when ‘all’ does not include God. We find God in an interruption.

Tuga is an interruption. He interrupts my day to remind me that there are people in pain all around me, if I would only open my eyes to them. Maybe this discomfort of my own will remind me.

I set Tuga on top of the dryer while I threw the clothes in the washer. An hour later I remembered him. See how I am?

Tuga is a mindfulness prop.

I know people who carry special coins in their pocket and I’ve given my own children fidget-toys to carry, but Tuga isn’t just for fiddling with when I’m bored. He’s there to remind me of the sorrow in this world, the sorrow people carry unseen in their hearts, the sorrow I carry in my own heart.

I’d say he’s doing a good job.