Discontentment: a play in three parts

The week was going to be impossible to enjoy I decided on Sunday, which is a wonderful parliamentary way to outlaw contentment in one's heart for a full week. Contentment was banished, by law and edict of Sunday's decision. An unwelcome denizen, cast out with the chicken bones and fanny packs with broken zippers. You know the basic plotline of this play.

I, playing a starring role as the Obliger, is huffing as she obliges every appointment and preordained meeting and every other Thing To Which She Said Yes, rueing the day she ever learned to say yes so well.  The other supporting roles are played by the usual suspects, a rotation of students and colleagues and one husband who falls very sick toward Act III and two children who don't understand why certain things set the Obliger off, I mean, Seriously, Mom, what is one rotting french fry wedged behind a carseat among friends?

The action comes to a climax when the inevitable meltdown transpires, the actress is centerstage facing the audience, whilst she furiously scrubs dishes and carries on in a monologue WHO CAN LIVE THIS WAY? that is probably a little too Medea and is not recommended for a younger audience. The denouement is only possible with reconciliation, to her husband, her children and to herself.

***

The stage is the place where dramatic irony is at its most delicious. The audience knows something is happening in tandem but the actors don't. In this play, there is no dramatic irony. There is action taking place in tandem, but it is not known by the audience or the actor. Because God does not demand an intermission. He bids, provides, loves, delights in us. He does it all, onstage and offstage, in spite of our parliamentary banishment of contentment. In spite of our prideful self-reliance, He is still so good. All last week, I know that I was constantly noticing beauty around me. The perfect Bob Ross leafscape in living color. The gymnast bouncing so perfectly on the trampoline at my kids' lesson. It wasn't aggressive, just whispers of beauty that blessed me in spite of my pouty comportment. Notice how I just used the word comportment. That's just a symptom of how pouty I was--I started bandying about words that should only be used to refer to royals. I will never be royal, but I am surely loved by the King of Kings who says godliness and contentment are uber beneficial. (1 Tim 6:6).