Not therapy, but therapist…. that is, revealer of personal insights. Through the craft of songwriting, I’ve learned patience, courage, and more recently, conversation surrender.

My friend Greg Leppert came over for dinner tonight. He lives across the street and just dropped by as I was opening the can of protein Amy had left out on the counter. Black beans, Tomato Bisk, and a box of chicken flavored rice (how, exactly, do the get the chicken “flavor” in there?) was on the menu, and the kids were whining about being hungry, again. Man, it’s like every 4 or 5 hours!

So Greg walks in, and immediately the house starts to go crazy. Jonah broke his parachute man and went down in a pile of tears, Livi was crying about her non-erasing etch-a-sketch and whining something about bread and water, and so I dove into crisis mode and stuck in the Fairytopia DVD we got from Mitch Dane at our Neighborhood fellowship group last night.

Almost like magic, the kids morphed into little TV zombies, mesmerized like the bugs that cling to our screen door all evening, staring silently through the glass. Sometimes I wonder if they spend the day flying straight towards the sun.

So I’m making dinner, and Greg goes deep quick. This guy is quoting Buddha, Jesus, defining chaos theory and explaining complex social behavior through triangulation, which he also had to define for me, all in one conversation. AND he didn’t sound pompous! Dude is just being Greg.

I know it’s probably hard to imagine, but I started to lose my train of thought somewhere between wiping Jonah’s mouth (face) and the rejoicing of the salvation of Fairyland. And here’s where years of songwriting paid a modest dividend.

Over the years I have tortured countless companions as I’ve tried to recover a thought from the conversation scrap heap. “Wait, what was I saying?” or “Just a minute, I’ve almost got it.”

No, I don’t. Sweet mercy.

I’ve lost countless hours of sleep refusing to surrender to the blankness… not considering that the blankness is God’s not so subtle clue that, um… it’s time for bed.

Yes, it is. Greg was spared, I moved on, and somehow stretched a tired blog out of the whole barely significant thing. Tomorrow night I’ll write 600 words finding meaning in that extra push you have to give some car doors when they don’t close all the way the first time you shut them. Or maybe I’ll just watch the third season of Arrested Development. I really want to know if Buster gets his memory back.