A We-Wu And A Remembrance

This is not the one I wanted to come back with.

I fully intended to do a We-Wu last week. I was going to talk about all of the things I was working on, the after-effects of my non-death, the celebration lunch with my team, and the incredibly short Labor Day break I was anticipating. It would have given me time to get my thoughts in order for the heaviness of this week.

Time, however, is something I find myself desperately grasping for. Is it just me getting older that makes time seem to move faster? Is it the absolute insane number of things I’m trying to get done?

Who really knows?

It doesn’t help that I have been thinking a lot about the 25 years that have passed since September 11, 2001. In some ways it feels longer than that, with how much has happened because of it or since then. That could be a product of being older and being more aware of the world around me.

But it’s also hard to realize just how much I’ve actually forgotten of those 25 years. The edges of the actual day have started to grow fuzzy. Things people said, feelings I had - they are more impressions or memories of memories. I could tease more out if I really wanted to, but that day is still a hard one for me. September 11, 2001, was one of those demarcation dates. I vaguely remember the world I lived in before, the person I was back then. But more time has passed for me since then than I had lived before. And I was only 15. I was young and dumb, unaware of just how little I actually understood about the world.

I didn’t have to, though. I think that’s something people don’t think about with kids today. When I was growing up, all I had to think about was what was happening in the world immediately surrounding me. I might have vague awareness of major events in the country, but tragedies like Columbine and Oklahoma City were still few and far between. The entire world was not immediately at my fingertips. I had no reason to care about the opinions of complete strangers because I would never encounter those people in my bubble. Call it privilege, call it ignorance, whatever - I had a very limited number of things I had to keep track of.

And then the world came my doorstep.

Whether I wanted to or not, I was forced to care about what was going on beyond my bubble. I had legitimate reasons to be afraid. And it took a long time for that fear to take a backseat. I think it may have found some new ground after Charlie Kirk was assassinated a year ago. And yes, that anniversary is also contributing to the heaviness.

I wish I could go back to the days when I didn’t know what the world thought of me. Most of the time, I don’t care. I’m going to stick to what I believe. But the sheer number of people who don’t seem to believe in anything bothers me. I don’t know how people live like that. And yes, those are the people I’m trying to reach with the Good News of Jesus. But sometimes, they are just so hateful. I want justice.

God sent mercy.

It’s a good thing I’m not in charge. A really good thing.

Except I am in charge of things. Poop.

Yes, that is my segue to talk about work.

I don’t have a lot of specific things to talk about. I have so many smaller projects and tasks that I have been working on, hopping from one thing to another. Some of them are done, some are waiting for more information, some I’ve probably forgotten I was doing, and some just aren’t worth mentioning. Through all of it, I was still dealing with computer issues. Sometimes it was the computer itself, sometimes it was the desk setup, and sometimes it was figuring out a new routine and sense memory of where things are located.

It’s both weird and nice to have a laptop now. It’s nice to be able to take it with me, but that also means I take work home more often. It’s weird because I have two external monitors, but when I disconnect, all of the windows I had on them come flooding back onto my laptop screen. Also, I’m really annoyed with operating systems that assume how I want to do things on my own computer.

Yes, I have a ton of stuff on my desk. I’m working on it. But this is probably the setup I’m keeping.

I mentioned a celebration! We were able to get most of the people who work on VCP stuff together in one place (that isn’t Zoom) to finalize some processes and then have a celebratory lunch. I didn’t actually think about getting a picture. Oops. But I think we had a good time, and it was nice to just hang out and not talk about work.

I’m also working on my prayer letter, which is taking a lot longer than I’d like. I have so many thoughts running through my mind, it’s hard to quiet them down and focus on just one thing. I used to be better at multi-tasking. Or at least better at faking it. But my job now consists of keeping track of a lot of little moving parts, and some of those parts are people, and frankly, I’m finding it to be more than a little overwhelming. My brain is stretching, and it hurts. I’m trying to take things one day at a time (sometimes an hour at a time), but I have never been able to stop my brain from moving way beyond what I’d like.

I don’t know if I really did justice to everything that is tumbling around up there. I have been watching a lot of videos from 25 years ago. I’ve been learning the names of people who did heroic things and people who just tried to live their lives in extraordinary circumstances, and thinking about the 2,977 people who didn’t know they were going to die and the more than 9,000 people who have been wondering ever since then how that day would kill them. I’ve been thinking about a war that started for righteous reasons and ended in failure. I’ve been thinking about a man who just wanted to talk to people, to get them to start thinking outside of their own bubble. I’ve been thinking about the many versions of the future that maybe don’t terrify me for me, but they scare me for the sake of those who have no interest in Truth.

I was talking to some friends about dispensationalism. And now you’re trying to recover from whiplash. “Jessica, where did that come from?” Bear with me. I’ll try to tie it together.

I do not subscribe to the dispensationalist theory. I do not believe in the Rapture. I do not believe in the Tribulation. I do believe that Jesus will return. I do believe He will sit in judgment over us. I believe we have been in the End Times since Jesus ascended into Heaven.

Here’s my theory: I think that Christians who wholeheartedly believe in dispensationalism or some amalgamation of it have been a little too comfortable with how they live their lives. They are a little too comfortable with going to church and singing the songs and nodding along to sermons but not actually taking much of it to heart. I think a lot of Christians have somehow gotten it into their heads that they don’t have to care about this world because the world a) gets what is coming to it; and b) the Christians aren’t actually going to have to deal with the really bad stuff.

The bad stuff is now. Can it get worse? Yes. Will it? Also yes. But if you don’t care about people now, what makes you think you’ll care about them later? If you think you’re going to be Raptured before all of the truly awful stuff, I think you’re in for a rude awakening. If you think you can skate by on a prayer you half remember from VBS 40 years ago, I am legitimately concerned for you. We need to be more concerned about people’s souls. You need to be more concerned about your own soul. If we have this idea in the background that all of the real Christians are going to be trumpeted up to Jesus and the backsliders will get a second chance after that, what happens if we’re wrong? What if there is no second chance? What if a plane flies into your workplace tomorrow and kills you? Do you know where you’re going after that? What if someone makes a joke about killing someone they disagree with? Do you care enough about that person to confront them?

I did mention I had a lot on my mind.

If you were in the online space, you’d probably be thinking, Wow, this kinda seems like black pill territory, and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. I have a tendency to flirt with that line. But I don’t think I’m there yet. I don’t want to be there. But if I feel this much despair at the sate of the world, imagine how the One Who Created it feels. He sent a flood once because it was so bad. He promised He wouldn’t send another.

We might have been better off with Flood 2.0.

Anyway, I can’t leave you with that, so here’s a picture of me accidentally matching the front of a Thank You card.

Go take care of the stuff in your bubble. Do it with love.

Bye!