Tonight as I write, God has sent a rainstorm to pace my words to the page, to touch my heart, my mind, my soul with the miracle, the common place miracle, of a rain storm. What a gift, and WHAT a Savior.Where can I start a blog that has been simmering inside for more than a good long week? It’s hard to unpack something I kept jamming more stuff into….kind of like a closet, from when you were a teen and cleaning your room meant finding a convenient and quick location for everything, of course you’d go back and really clean later…only to find that later finds you risking life and limb and death by falling objects…hmmm…how’d that happen?
First and foremost is the thought that God is really, really GOOD. Pure and simple, holy and true, faithful and loving, just and merciful…what an AWESOME Savior we all have. Second, I love the new church He has led me to. Some are aware and some may not be aware of my struggles with the church I’ve been in since day two of crossing the Texas line in 2006. However little or much you might know, or not know, all you really need to know is that if only to find this place, I would count it all worth it.
Of course, that isn’t the only good thing that has happened, and I don’t want to make it sound like it was a prison sentence to be carried out to be at the church I’m referring to. But still…the place I go to now I find like a soothing balm, an old friend, a new hope all rolled into one. I missed it, and have found it all in one. I still plan to finish what I started in 2006 but it is easier now, my soul is being fed, and I’m completely addicted. =>
Now, my housekeeping seems to be more or less taken care of and the real work of allowing my thoughts and experiences that have been held back freedom to be, space to exist and words to connect the pieces like anchors to reality…..simple enough, right?
Where did the closet stuffing begin? Probably about two months ago. And some of it I can point to, the bulky easy stuff…some of it is more subtle, harder to catch like a tree root’s daily growth –something measureable over time but harder to see in an hour by hour, day by day event. Two months ago I received a promotion at work and yes it was nice, and good, and a burden relieved…especially in this economy. I knew going in there were challenges, and it would be a huge amount of work and information. I wasn’t wrong. Things I hadn’t even thought about…working for someone new when I had a really good relationship with my previous bosses; when each manager I’d met was further confirmation of a previously held belief (the good manager’s all hide out in one or two companies, leaving the rest of the corporate world to hold up without them, and thus contribute to the image most people think of when they hear those words, Corporate America.) I’d survived my previous exposure to the houses without real leaders, and jadedly was beginning to believe the idea of a good manager was more mythical than Santa Clause. Then I came to work at the Bank.
From the very first, the managers I’d met were unlike any I’d ever encountered before. Could it be? I’d traveled to another dimension? Was I finally glimpsing Pegasus? I didn’t hold my breath. But I did hold back, testing the ground beneath me, expecting it to shift at any moment. It didn’t. Nine months later I’d been promoted. I was eager to meet my new manager, sad to leave my old one, but I didn’t fear it, I didn’t even bat an eye, and I was encouraged and uplifted, and applauded by my old one who knew this would be a good opportunity for me. So on…and up I went.
Plunge! It’s a good thing I’m optimistic…I have some cushion as it were between me and the impact. I reminded myself to keep breathing, and to…keep repeating that process…WOW. It was dizzying. And it took me a couple weeks to really define the biggest shift, that felt very seismic…and my instincts kept darting to the nearest doorway wanting to dodge falling objects. But truthfully I’ve been in places before where it was required, hence the instinct speaking before my brain could articulate why the adrenaline was propelling me out of my chair. And, I’ve definitely been in worse. This was not worse. So what gives? What was I responding to? And, what am I going to do about it?
These are just a few of the questions that I’ve been pondering lately. But they are kind of background. Well, perhaps the boulders and the roots slip slide and take turns at being the background and the foreground. And through this all life has been changing rapidly not just for me but for my friends and family too. I of course have the privilege and honor of being peripherally upswept in theirs too. (Granted, some more than others, but still, the music played, I danced.)
Some of those songs played like a Monet’s watercolor; others like Van Gogh’s vivid realities all stippled and layered. One of these is Cedar. (And my best friend has heard all lot of vague ramblings and aches in this area.) However, the impression has been so strong, beating beneath my heart, cramping like an amputee’s limb, recently removed. It aches, it’s there, and yet, it isn’t. I cannot express nor explain why it has been so intense of late; this is an old ache for me, I’ve had it for years. I tried to date it, and justifiably at least since I was sixteen, but if you could have asked my six year old self I would have been confident and totally assured. But of course! (Thus my thinking that cartoons all had it wrong…where was Daffy’s wife? Bug’s had a couple times where you saw a girl bunny…but it was an epidemic…categorically there was always one without the other, and they should have all been pairs. Duh!) You’d think then, this weight would be something I’m accustomed to.
But I feel like I’ve been jarred from sleep, in the middle of the night; reached for a phone piercing the night, to hear incoherent sorrow conveying tragedy, hurt…in a garbled mix of facts that don’t add up. The conversation is short. The impression lasts and lasts, until you can see for yourself, until you are standing by the hospital bedside.
Compounding this impression is Rip Van Winkle gift, suddenly walking down your street this week, in the guise of an old friend, come to call, catch up on the intervening years. You pull out a chair; break out cookies, hot cocoa, and prop your elbow on the table in order to listen to your long lost buddy pour out their sorrows, their troubles. Then you awake. (And not on your kitchen table, as expected, but in your own bed.) You stumble outside, and you find the impression in the grass from where Rip reposed for so long, but no sign of Mr. Van Winkle. You question yourself all the way home, did it really happen, and if it did, what are you going to do about it? Agony like awaking to find all life as you knew it long gone, a reality Mr. Van Winkle heart wrenching now lived, a state clearly not something you could just walk away from, ignore. You check your cupboards, and all the cookies are gone; there are mugs in the sink, two of them. How long has it been? Where did he go? How can you help? Was it real? Was it a dream?
I have also missed my characters, my stories, my writing. Oh yeah, and slip in a doctor’s visit, where the pronouncement placed me at a crossroads of faith and blindness. Why is that such a lonely place? Why does that terrify? Why does the ‘preventative halting’ seem the wrong way to go? Why are blue eyes so shattering hard to lose/alter/risk?
A friend, Muke, died from Cancer 3-23-09. Unlike the description above, it happened simply, in the middle of the work week, on a Wednesday, while checking some voice mails I found the voice of a friend calmly telling me the story was on the news, and I should know. Quietly offereing solace, with unwasted words, and an offer to the one we both know would be more affected by the passing. I sent both prayers and some flowers. Life moved on. Ready or not...
The church dilemma was eating away at me as well, as mentioned. I found a new one, a haven, but did I dare believe it could be…after so long….
Into the silence of two months of absence I receive an email from my old class, and in it the teacher writes, among other things this profound quote capturing so much of what I was searching to say, what I knew and it felt wonderful to know someone else out there understood, what I still struggle to articulate.
For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the LORD. For as the Heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.
Throw in another dream, so real, so intense, so….long….since its predecessors journeyed into my heart. 16, 18, 19...from a quiet sleeper, undisturbed mornings, untroubled by the state of inertia how unusual to suddenly have two so close together. Yet this one…like the ones that came before so gentle, so…natural, the cadence, the flow, the message conveyed. So why is it so fracturing, a pull between my faith and my fear. This is my life story. If nothing else, a nice respite, something I’m holding close to my heart like a plush fluffy oversized teddy bear, or bunny. It speaks of gentle love and miracles. Whether I can bring myself to believe yet doesn't alter how comforting it feels to hold the ideas.
I made it back this week to church. What should I hear on Sunday, adding to what I have listed above, capturing my attention like water to a desert traveler?
(There was a lot more to the sermon, but truthfully and atypically, this is all I remember with clarity.)
“Miracles are not meant to be a reference point in your past. They aren’t just another event that happened in a string of other events. Miracles are to be tutors to our life, helping us to understand the truth of the real reality, one so profound and deep, and altering life as we know it is changed, wholly, markedly. Like, Neo’s understanding of the miracle of the Matrix allowed him to dodge bullets, to see them in snapshot like moments, and to bend himself around them, or pluck them from the air. This understanding was a radical transformation of who he was in the reality, and the reality of what was possible.”
“Do you remember the story of a mustard seed and a mountain? Have you ever really thought of the truth, the practical aspect of what it means? Have you been trying to move hunks of rock and nothing is happening? A mustard seed sized faith can move a mountain of fear, a mountain of unbelief.”
An Apostle’s promise, “And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Cor. 12:9-10
“So ask God for a new heart, hold miracles for what they are, seek that reality, of a loving God teaching you the truth and your relationship to it, continue to broaden your horizons, your perceptions, your faith…admit when you are weak, when it is tough, go to your Lord, who is fully present, fully engaged, and fully ready to be your strength, then live in that strong reality.”
Later that day, I reward myself with a trip to my new haven. The last three weeks have been so gripping, so convicting, so refreshing. I entered the building again, ready for the next installment, to have the ‘shock therapy’ nourish my soul. As I approached the sanctuary there were tables along the walls with dishes evenly spaced upon them. My first thought, ‘bake sale’, quickly followed by ‘I wonder if they have…’, and ‘I probably shouldn’t even if they do….’ Within a few more steps I realized what they truly were. Communion. Tonight’s service would be a communion service. Simultaneous responses careened within me.
First, a sorrow that over the course of the last couple years, my faith walks was more likely to be alerted in autopilot by the idea of a bake sale…to revive an otherwise placid situation of constructed scripts and responses.
Secondly, and lastly, and more strongly, a relief so great it washed over me like a monsoon, gratitude pouring down right alongside humble relief. How long, oh how long….still as I took my seat I expected another gripping, let’s be real, and really talk about this idea of journeying with God, sermon. Another unexpected present awaited me. Today they were doing baptisms, even in a 7 o’clock service….
I settled in. I like baptisms, they move me, and mean more to me as I grow older. (And they are a major part of the other church too.) It wasn’t until the first one began that I realized the difference, how ‘bake sale’ my concept of baptisms had become recently. No, this baptism service was a blessed communion. It was the service, it was the sermon. The only piece the Pastor offered was the actual communion offering the sacred reminder, of what it meant and what it stood for and how Jesus in today’s terms would have bluntly summed it up as: “Don’t forget! Don’t you dare forget!” Words that would have been spoken with a passionate tenderness, from a loving heart, not in the tone so many assume would be filled with judgment. NO, His tone would have been filled with all the love He had in His heart, a vivid reminder, a last benediction...one that would resemble your dieing Mother or Father's last words/words you would always remember because of who they came from and the love they had bestowed upon you all of your life. 'Don't forget, my darling, my beloved, don't forget...' Don’t forget the truth, the reality, the NEW reality, the NEW hope, the newness of a sinless Savior freely surrendering His very life for sinners' who had no clue, who needed Him so much. Accepting all sins as His, in our place, for all time…..this is HIS body, broken for you…this is HIS blood poured out for you. Don’t forget. It’s as simple as that.
It is as profound as the difference between a bake sale and a communion.
