Taking Inventory

Last week two things happened that are in a way related, at least on a personal level.

The company that I work for, for the first time in over five years, closed down the operations for a few days to take stock inventory. There were several reasons for doing it. It was the end of the business year and we needed to know how much product we owned; some counts had gotten wildly out of whack, making us unsure if we sold something to someone whether it would be there or not when we went to fulfill the order; and we saw product on the shelf that the system thought had been sold off a long time. It took weeks of preparation and four days to actually count everything. It got pretty hectic at times and we all breathed a sigh of relief when it was over. So for now, at least until next year, we have a good idea of what we have in our warehouse.

The morning after inventory ended I received an e-mail telling me that my best friend from high school had died in his sleep the previous night. He had been battling heart problems since 2006 and was just a couple of weeks past the first anniversary of his heart transplant. He was 48 and left a wife and three children. We were inseparable for three years in high school and one year after that when I graduated and went to the same university. He was the best man at our wedding 27 years ago and I was his best man two years after that. Job relocations took me across the country and we grew apart over the years, but the occasional phone call or e-mail could fill in the lost years without missing a beat.

Every January most of us stop and take inventory. Aren’t New Year’s resolutions just that, taking inventory of our lives, seeing where we are at, and taking steps to correct where we’ve gone off from our ideal or goals? We prepare lists, try to be honest in our assessment of shortcomings, and for at least a while, armed with best intentions and our bullet points of improvements, go boldly forward into the world. At least until the following December, when we look over the list (if we know where it is) and prepare to make some more adjustments to our sails and the wheel steering us on our course. This is just the 2nd of March and I’m not sure where my list is at already.

But events like my friend’s death are like God giving us a pop quiz. We don’t have time to prepare (even when you know that they’re going to be there), and the questions we ask ourselves aren’t the ones we usually ask. Instead of ‘Can we make it out of debt this year? or ’If we manage to save any money, where would you like to go on vacation?‘ , we ask ourselves the tougher questions, the ones that really matter. Who am I? What am I doing with myself? What has my life meant up to now? What kind of legacy will I leave? My friend wrote a 2,000 word autobiography and I wasn’t mentioned, even in passing. The years of our lives where we were always together, he wrote down as a time when he had “no plan, focus or goal.” That’s it. It may be true about our life at that time, come to think about it, but to see it on paper kind of dampens the memories.

I know that my wife will say that I’ve matured a lot since then and left an imprint on her and our family; heck, she could probably write a page full if she sat down and thought about it. It’s probably better that I should be the one to do it, if just to remind myself of where I have come from, what I have accomplished and let it show me where I still want to go. The Hebrews in the Bible were always making altars to remember special occasions by or giving things meaning by their name. I thank the Lord that I haven’t had to name a child ‘not loved’ or the water well outside ‘place of contention’, although I could have named at least one of my kids ‘laughter’.

One of the problems with these self-assessments is comparison. I was always the one to play second fiddle to my best friend. He was always better at everything than I was, from pool to music to school. Everything that I enjoyed to do, he did better and even the things that I hated to do, he was good at. When I first met the woman who would be my wife, he was the first to ask her out! Reading over the rest of his autobiography, I felt the old feelings of inadequacy come back, each of his accomplishments an indictment of my lack of achievement. I have to keep reminding myself that he was the only one who could do what God called him to do. I’m still here, so God must have something left that only I can do. His death reminds me that I have a limited amount of time left to do it.

Another problem is self-absorption. I can easily spend so much time (like on this post?) looking for problems in my life, mulling over them, trying to solve them in my own strength that I can become overwhelmed and never take the time to give any of them to God.

We all need from time to time to look in the mirror. It isn’t always pleasant when we see ourselves, especially in the harsher light that an event like this brings, but it burns brighter because we need to really look closely at the things that we usually ignore. We like to quickly check the hair, see if the tie is on straight, but at times like this it’s good to look hard at the imperfections and make sure that what we do see isn’t something life threatening or see it for something that needs correction.

“Investigate my life, O God, find out everything about me; Cross-examine and test me, get a clear picture of what I’m about; See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong – then guide me on the road to eternal life.”
Psalms 139:23,4