Nasty Me

8/6/2006
Location: South Station, Boston, Massachusetts
Just about the time in life when I start to believe that I am well along on my road to “sanctification,” or slowly becoming more Christ-like, God decides to expose to me some of my darkest, dirty parts of myself.
Recently this has shown up in the form of Amtrak Trains. Somehow, most every time I get on an Amtrak Train I will inevitably be late to my destination—and not even making it in the new estimated time of arrival as well. It is scary to see the anger/impatience/brooding that goes in inside of my head as I wait, wondering if I will ever get where I am supposed to be. Yes, I know, I can wait and there is absolutely nothing that I can do to change the situation—but it still leaves me bordering on being furious.
For instance, now I sit waiting still in Boston for my train to Springfield—we were supposed to leave 50 minutes ago. I do not know when we are leaving, and to make matters worse, we are not sitting in the station any longer, we are sitting on a train that is not moving.
I find myself recounting all the times this summer when I have used this form of transportation, I remember as I rack up cases against Amtrak, that of the 5 trains I’ve used this summer so far, 4 have been late. I guess I hate calling whoever is picking me up—especially when it’s someone I haven’t met yet/seen in a long time, and announcing I will be seemingly inconveniencing them even more than I originally intended.
But still, I would expect myself to handle this situation well. To put it out of my mind, to understand there is absolutely nothing I can do to change this and thus to choose to take advantage of this extra amount of time to catch up on reading or sleep or something—but instead I see my own ugly, angry self, funny how I reflect on it each time, really never seeing myself get this way in any other situation. It’s humorous but it’s also a great reminder of how far I am from being the person I want to be—how I can continually surprise myself with how I treat someone or think about someone or do something “completely out of character;” however, times like this make me acknowledge that no, I am acting in character at this moment, as nasty as it may be.