Hope

When Times are Tough and Hope is Lagging, Look UP!

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My Column for The Elgin Review, April 1, 2020

In my experience, sometimes manna from heaven looks more like a roll of toilet paper sailing over four stalls, trailing a beautiful white train behind it, than like some sort of bread miraculously provided for the people of Israel wandering out in the desert. If you aren’t familiar with the story of manna for the people of Israel, it’s in the book of Exodus in the Bible. It’s a story about God providing what God’s children need when times are tough and hope is lagging.

When I was a brand-new young missionary in Zaire, I’d been in our home for a week or so when I decided one of the things that I really needed was some fabric to make curtains for our windows. Pastor Efefe and the school’s driver agreed to take me to the city ten miles from our village where I could do some shopping. I’d selected my fabrics and was standing in a long line waiting to pay for my purchases when my gut clenched. Zairian food was not something I was yet accustomed to and my GI system was in full revolt. My need was urgent.

Bashfulness and modesty be damned, I turned to Pastor Efefe and asked in French “where is the restroom?” His eyes widened to match mine and he said, “we have to go to the church offices here in the capitol.” Grabbing the driver by the arm, we made quite a scene leaving the store. The clerk hollered from behind the counter, “Hey, where are you going? We’ve already cut the foreign woman’s fabric” And Pastor Efefe yelled in a loud, clear voice, “She’s got the runs! We’ll be back later.”

This is how bad my situation was; I wasn’t even humiliated.

We made it to the church offices, and Pastor Efefe pointed down the hall to the rest room. Never in all my days, neither before or since, have I ever been so thankful for a toilet. Sweet, sweet relief quickly turned to horror however, when I realized there was no toilet paper in the stall. There was nothing, and there was no one else in the restroom to ask for help. Minutes ticked by. I was contemplating tearing my cotton dress off a few inches above the hem and using that instead of paper when Pastor Efefe’s voice rang out from the hallway outside the restroom door. “Madame Le Pasteur” he hollered while opening the door, “en haut!” which means “up!” And there, like manna from heaven came that most blessed roll of toilet paper sailing through the air above me. I was saved.

It’s a funny story that came back to my mind because of the current toilet paper hoarding that’s going on due to Covid-19. Remembering the story now reminds me that God is always at work finding a way to provide us with what we need. Even when what we need is humbling and oh, so very human.

My friends, look up. We won’t always be in this situation. A day will dawn when this crisis is past and a brighter future is ahead of us. Look up! God’s help is on its’ way.

Park Congregational Church is worshipping by Zoom these days. Contact me at beckyzmmcneil@gmail.com and I’ll help you connect with us for worship.

 

Snow Angels and other prayers

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They shuffle in, the first two with hair disheveled and bad dye-jobs, locks matted from too much time in their bunks. Faded florescent pink sweats hang baggy on their tattooed frames. Younger than my boys, I guess. Twenty-two, twenty-three perhaps. Another, older, rounder, with a short-auburn bob finds her place at the end of the table, quietly pulling out her chair. The fourth carries a thick red-leather, red-letter Bible in her willowy hands and wears her hair piled on top of her head. Her granny-glasses have lenses so thick her eyes precede her into the room, reminding me of a grasshopper–a very pregnant pink grasshopper. Her stomach swells taut against her sweatshirt, revealing her inside-out belly button below. She talks without stopping to breathe. At the end of this short parade comes a slim, tall woman with curly dark hair cropped like Peter Pan’s, slouching. There’s an energy of anger pulsing just beneath the surface of her skin. A thin blue vein beneath her eye twitches in time to her heart beat. Intelligent eyes silently claim, “I don’t belong here” as she curls, like a fetus onto the rolling chair.

The women of the county jail are a motley crew.

I carry with me, on my coat and in my hair, the crisp, fresh smell of snow.

“We have snow!” I say, with the delight of the first blanketing of a season, when the crisp, cold freshness is still novel and exciting, and driving on ice and through snirt (snow mixed with dirt) hasn’t yet grown wearisome and disgusting. “It’s so pretty out there.”

Without windows, the women were unaware of the hushed beauty pillowing the landscape on the other side of the cinder blocks surrounding them.

“I love snow!”

“I wish I could see it!”

“The men may get to go outside to shovel it.”

“I’d love to see it falling from the sky.”

“I’d make a snow angel if I could.”

Five of the six of us laugh.

It is my first visit to the jail to share Bible study with the women. I didn’t know they couldn’t see the snow.

Around an oval conference table in a nondescript interior room, they tell me their stories. Meth and Crack and a parole violation. Dealing in several counties, and jail time awaiting in each one.

Grasshopper starts talking. Five babies taken away, but this one, this one, she is determined, this one, her sixth, (is she even twenty-five?) this one will be born drug-free. She’s going to give this baby the life he deserves. She knows God is with her always has been always will be she just needs to trust in Jesus and get back to church and doing what the Gospels teach and not listen to the people who are always trying to lead her astray and she may have had the other kiddos taken from her because of drugs but not this one because this time she’s getting into the Word and following the Way and she’s not messing up again no way and if the baby daddy doesn’t want to support her and wants her to get messed up again she’ll just leave this time that’s all there is to it because she knows she’s God’s precious child and so is this baby and this time it’s all going to be alright so she’s actually happy to be in jail because it means less time to be tempted to backslide and turn her back on God which she isn’t going to do this time. No way.

Bonnie weeps. When she finds her voice she says she misses her fourteen-year-old boy. She feels so guilty. She really messed up and he’s the one who’s paying the price. “A boy needs his mother. Mine really loves me.” She says. “I really messed up this time” and again she weeps.

Five of the six of us weep.

Stoney silence from Peter Pan.

We feast on stories shared from our lives and from God’s good book. Grasshopper sings, “Jesus Loves me.”

Five of the six of us sing.

Our hour draws to a close. Teeth are starting to chatter and blue goose bumps have risen on the bare thighs of the bleached blonde girl wearing prison issue pink shorts instead of sweats.

I ask how we can pray for each other. “For my boy.” “For this baby” “For my boyfriend” “For me and my court date on Wednesday.”  I ask them to pray for me and my churches and for my six kids.

Peter Pan unfolds her long limbs and uncurls her lips and for the first time speaks very quietly saying, “Pray for my daughters, they’re 16 and 17 and live in Detroit where I am a social worker with a Master’s degree. Oxycontin got me here and I want out.”

Six of the six of us pray.

I step into the blinding brightness of sunlight bouncing off freshly fallen snow.

A holy dance of longing and liberty moving me.

My Season of Unfortunate Events

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My Column for The Elgin Review in Elgin, NE published November 6, 2019

This past Saturday I stood precariously perched with my left foot on the edge of the bathtub and my right foot on the lid of the toilet trying to maneuver myself to get one foot out the window and the rest of me to follow. Laughing, I thought, “I guess this is just my season of unfortunate events.”

The parsonage is half a year older than I am. The house has reached its’ sixtieth birthday, and I will in February. By sixty, things begin to wear out. On Saturday morning, it was the door knob mechanism on the bathroom door, after my shower, with me stuck inside the bathroom. The good news was Mike was home from Lincoln and could come to my rescue and I had taken clothes with me into the bathroom before my shower so I wasn’t trying to climb out the parsonage window wearing only a towel.

My husband is handy and by the time he left to go back to Lincoln on Sunday afternoon, the door was back on its hinges with a new door knob set and all new innards and should be good to go for the next sixty years. The whole episode cost us some time, some muscles stretched in interesting ways from climbing out (me) and in (Mike) the window and less than ten bucks for the new hardware at Bomgaar’s.

The season of unfortunate events, of which I hope Saturday’s climb out the bathroom window was its culmination, began with a speeding ticket on my commute back to Antelope County from Lincoln a week ago. I stopped in Stromsburg to stretch my legs and forgot to turn my cruise control back on when I returned to the highway. The audiobook I was listening to was really good and my foot got too heavy on the pedal and a highway patrol woman was sitting right there on the west side of Highway 39.  The good news was I wasn’t in Antelope Country so it won’t show up in the newspaper (why am I writing about it here?), and, while expensive and inconvenient, I have money to cover the ticket.

The second of the “bad things come in threes” unfortunate events started Monday.  I am one of the unlucky ones for whom the new Shingles vaccine knocked me out. Tuesday morning after the vaccine on Monday afternoon I was kaput. Low grade fever, chills, a really sore, itchy arm and oh boy! I was tired for most of the week–even still on Saturday as I climbed out the window. The good news was it wasn’t a bad week for me to be under the weather. I had time to cozy up in the parsonage, do some reading and a lot of sleeping.

The writer of Ecclesiastes in the Bible said, “For everything there is a season.” Some seasons last a long time, some are fleeting. Some seasons leave us in tears, and some leave us laughing. Some seasons find us living high on the hog, and some leave us broke, or broken.  That’s the way life is. None of us is immune to going through times of sorrow or testing and none of us live without joy forever.

No matter what season you find yourself in. No matter where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome at Park Congregational United Church of Christ where this past weekend they laughed with me over my season of unfortunate events. At Park Church we’ll laugh with you, cry with you and share all of life’s seasons with you in the love and grace of Christ.

We’re ten miles west of Elgin on HWY 70 and ½ mile south. Worship on Sundays is at 9:15 am. Set your cruise control and head our way soon.

I love to hear from you. My email is beckyzmcneil@gmail.com