I have session visitation tonight. For those of you who aren’t members of an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, “session visitation” is when elders of the church visit with your family as a way of keeping the church leadership in touch with the congregation. At my church, the elders generally make these visits in pairs. This has been occasionally awkward in the past, from a social standpoint. Who is asking most of the questions? Do I direct my answers to him or include the silent partner in my eye contact? Am I supposed to feed them?
Tonight the social dilemmas are solved by virtue of the fact that the visit is taking place at Starbucks. Obviously I can’t make and bring cookies to Starbucks even if I felt so inclined. The barristas would probably attack me (in a laid back café manner). I have been told in advance that I’ll be treated to a hot beverage. I think meeting around a table will also help with the eye contact issue, as most of my problem in the past has been with my apartment seating arrangements, and creating too wide of a conversational triangle.
When you…okay, I’ll just speak for me…. When I go to the dentist, or to the doctor, they usually ask me some questions I’m not comfortable answering. Questions like, “Do you floss?” or “Do you get enough sleep/exercise/healthy food?” I always squirm a little bit, because I know they’ve told me the same things over and over again. And I always try to think of something I’m doing better, so I can offer that up to placate the health professional in question.
Session visits are a little bit like that. Every self-justifying molecule in my being attempts to exert itself, but then so does every self-deprecating molecule. (I think the truth of my life is somewhere between those extremes—I’m probably doing better than I could dream and not half as well as I imagine.) There’s the temptation to confess “safe sins”; the temptation to spew out everything that’s feeling wrong in my life; etc., etc., all adding up to a larger-scale version of what I deal with every day: trying to figure out how to speak the truth in love, how to say “I’m not okay” without putting the burden of fixing me on anyone but God, how to rejoice in all the crazy chaos because I know (remember, Suzanne? you do know) the end of the story.
I kind of want to be graded on these visits. (I want grades on practically everything I do. I just love grades.) As it is, I never know whether or not I’m saying the right things, but I guess “saying the right things” is never what genuine conversation is about, anyway.
2 comments:
Suzanne I do not try to placate the dentist anymore. I have decided that when she's in there with her super pokey things cleaning the gunk out of my teeth, she's making it hurt worse ON PURPOSE just to try to convince me to floss twice a day so it won't hurt next time. So I resolved to never floss and then just tell her straight out that I don't think I need to ever floss and she's a lying liar.
...That being said, I tried my strategy at the dentist this past Monday and she told me I have two cavities between my teeth. Oh well.
Talking about grades always reminds me of the Simpsons episode when the teachers go on strike. After a few days, Lisa runs up to her mother with a piece of paper and shouts, "Look at me! Grade me! Evaluate and rank me! I'm good, good, good and oh so smart! Grade meeeeee!!" Marge writes a big "A" on the piece of paper; Lisa clutches it to her, sighs contentedly, and walks from the room.
I know exactly how she feels, but I'm not proud of it.
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