Spooky

The pastor is tired today. He woke up early; the telephone rang twice, not full rings, just two short little rings at about 5:00 a.m. No one was calling, and there were no messages on voicemail. However, the phone wasn't working, at least not the phone in the pastor's office. Every light was blinking, showing that all eight extensions were in use, which is spooky, because there is only one extension.

Walking around in the pre-dawn darkness, with everyone else still sleeping, the pastor heard another sound, a beeping sort of sound. It was either somebody's cell phone receiving a text message, or the minivan in the garage locking and unlocking itself, as if someone was pressing the keyless entry button on the keychain. The pastor set out to investigate. He checked his cell phone: no text messages had been received. He checked his wife's cell phone and the teenager's cell phone: no text messages. He thought about going to the garage, but there were no more beeping sounds, and he thought, "What would be the point?" All that was left was silence in a dark house where everyone else was still asleep.

Yesterday, Sunday, the pastor got up early. He went over to church before sunrise, to read through his sermon a couple of times. The sermon was a little different, and he wanted to be familiar, comfortable, with it. Being an introvert anyway, church is, on a normal day, emotionally draining for him; yesterday, by the end of worship, with its unusual sermon, he was exhausted. The pastor's wife went out to lunch after worship, while the pastor sat in bed. It took an hour for him to be able to get up and fix lunch for him and his young children.

At 3:30, the pastor loaded up his mini-van with a half-dozen teenagers for a trip to Woodland. The pastor's youth group was combining with another church's youth group for a program, dinner, and an evening at the Woodland Corn Maze. Running through a corn maze at night is fun, but guess what: it's also tiring.

Before going to bed, the pastor sat in the living room, where his teenager was watching Final Destination 2 on DVD. After about twenty minutes, the pastor got a little freaked out, so he left and went to bed. He was tired, after all.

Strange things are happening in the pastor's life. Could it be due to the fact that Halloween is approaching? Could it be too much movie-watching through half-closed eyes? Could it be an unusual flare-up of sunspot activity? Or is it all in the pastor's head?

The pastor thinks it is the latter, and he's going to spend the rest of today doing some "self-care." However, even now, the lights on the phone are still blinking....