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Damn that dark green sedan!

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I had a recurring dream as a child. I was on my tricycle on the sidewalk in front of our house, the little light green house on North 49th Street where we lived until I was four and a half. I was on my red tricycle when a big dark green old-fashioned sedan came careening down the hill on the sidewalk. When I had the dream, I always woke up terrified and crying just before the car plowed over me.

Again and again I had that dream as a child. I was as powerless to stop the dream from recurring as I was powerless in the dream to either get away from the car, or to stop the car on its menacing dive toward my destruction.

Monday I awoke refreshed and happy from a good night’s sleep but taking my phone off its charger and sitting down in the easy chair in our bedroom I read the headlines of Sunday night’s massacre in Las Vegas. I felt the familiar feeling from childhood–the recurring dream in which I am utterly powerless, utterly unable to change the course of events around me. I wanted to scream, but instead I simply sat, stunned, sad, and suddenly weary as if I had not slept in years.

Why does this nightmare, this gun violence nightmare, this only in America nightmare, why does it keep coming, keep bearing down on us again and again and again?  When will we wake up? When will we claim our power to stop this from happening? When will we decide we are not scared little children waking from a bad dream, but full-grown adults fully capable of making this stop? When will we insist that just as cars don’t belong on the sidewalk where children ride their trikes, rapid fire weapons and hand guns have no legitimate place among us?

How long until we wake up, claim our power, and put a stop to this nightmare once and for all? Because, unlike my recurring childhood dream where I awakened shaken, but very much healthy and alive, in this national gun violence recurring nightmare– real children of God die, needlessly, violently,

Every. Single. Time.

In the name of God who said, “Do not kill” how about we wake up and collectively decide God probably got it right on that accord? How about we wake up? How about we make the nightmares stop? How about we claim our power? How about we do it, beginning now?

This nightmare needs to stop. Please, God, make it stop. Please, my fellow Americans, make it stop. Please.

I’ll do my part, and you do yours, I’ll contact my senators and representatives and I’ll be persistent and you contact yours and be persistent and dogged and unwavering and together we will make it stop.

And then, oh! and then, we will awaken, we will awaken, living the recurring dream, being refreshed and happy on each new day that the Lord has made for all of us to rejoice and be glad in.

What we don’t know

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“Becky, we think you don’t know what’s been happening in your home when you aren’t there.”

Sharon, my neighbor, told me this story with deep sadness and after apologizing for not having told me sooner, while also apologizing for “stepping in where maybe I don’t belong–maybe this is none of my business…

…The other day the boys came in the house from your house and went into Jon’s (her son) room. It was Jon and Jake (another middle-school kid who hung around our neighborhood once in a while) and Adam (my son).” She said, “I was putting away laundry out in the hall and Jon’s door was open a little. I heard Adam say, “My Dad hates me!” and the way he said it was just heart-breaking. And then Jake said, “I know, man. My dad hates me, too.” And Jon said, “Shut-up Jake! You don’t know what you’re talking about. Your dad doesn’t hate you, he’s just being a dad. Adam’s dad really does hate him.”

Sharon, wagging her head and looking at me with sorrow in her eyes said, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

Sharon was right. I didn’t know what was happening in my home when I wasn’t there. That day, once I knew, I knew I needed to act. I needed to change things. I needed to protect my sons. I needed to stop thinking I was able to hold everything together and I was the only one being harmed by my husband’s anger. Once I knew his anger wasn’t being directed only at me but at the kids too, my responsibility to the kids was clear.

I don’t beat myself up about not knowing. None of us know what we don’t know until we know it.

Sometimes we think we know because we know something else. But seriously, we can’t know what we don’t know until we know it.

I have a friend who didn’t know her husband was sexually abusing their daughter. She didn’t know until she did know. I have a friend who didn’t know his wife had been carrying on an affair for years. He didn’t know until he did know. I have a pastor friend who didn’t know the administrative assistant was embezzling money. She didn’t know until she did know.

I didn’t know what was happening in my home when I wasn’t there because what was happening when I was there was different than what was happening when I wasn’t, and because my boys didn’t tell me  and because I didn’t even think to ask (even though maybe I should have).

Jake thought he knew what Adam was going through because he thought it was the same thing he was experiencing at home. But then Jon set him straight with the charming candor of fourteen year old boys, “Shut-up, Jake! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Today I’ve been thinking most of us who are white people need someone with Jon’s candor right about now. “Shut-up! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Before we weigh-in against athletes taking a knee in prayerful protest we might be wise to acknowledge we don’t know what we don’t know about being dark-skinned in this country because we don’t have dark skin. The only way we can possibly begin to know what we don’t know is by paying attention, listening, and turning off our preconceived notions about how much we think we know. We need to be humble enough to listen when our neighbors tell us what they’ve seen and experienced even if what they tell us makes us uncomfortable and means that we need to change things because now we do know.

Maybe there are a whole lot of us who don’t know what’s happening to our neighbors here in the home of the brave and the land of the free. Maybe it’s time to hold off on knee-jerk reactions and to be very quiet instead to listen well to those who, with sorrow in their eyes and truth on their tongues, tell us what they know, so we can begin to know it, too.

Maybe, when we really listen, we’ll be moved to bend our knees in contrition, to say, I didn’t know until I knew but now I do. And then, arm in arm we can stand up and begin to do what’s right together.

 

Transformed

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It was one of those calls that comes out of the blue. A local therapist introduced herself and explained, “One of your church members, Connie Smith* has been seeing me for some time now. She asked me to call you. Would you be willing to join us for one of her therapy sessions in the near future?” When I asked what it was about, she said, “Let’s just wait until you are here to talk about that.”

The call left me curious and anxious because Connie came to the church at the invitation of a couple who had recently left the church in a huff without being honest about why they were leaving. They managed to sow seeds of dissention as they went. What kind of ugly bomb was about to be dropped at my feet? How was I about to be blamed this time for something out of my control? (I was suffering from PTCSD- post-traumatic-church-syndrome from ugliness at my prior congregation).

I’ll come back to Connie’s story but for now, I’ll let you stew momentarily, as I did, wondering (and worrying) what in the world Connie needed her minister to visit about with her therapist.

The Godsquad, the church youth group I spent my favorite hours of every week of every year I was in Junior and Senior High with, used to belt out these words from scripture with far greater enthusiasm than musicality:

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and anyone who loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He who loveth not, (clap, clap, clap) knoweth not God for God is love. Beloved, let us love one another first John four seven and eight…” Repeat ad nauseum ad infinitum.

When I left the Godsquad for college, though I was raised in a mainline congregation, I was what anyone would describe as a religious conservative. Heavily influenced by my Grandma Zahller, who, due to Multiple Sclerosis lived in an apartment in our basement, my deep faith, nurtured and nourished at church, included a lot of Grandma’s legalism.

Over time, with serious study of the Bible, nurturing relationships with professors and classmates and eventually colleagues; with travel, the accumulation of life experiences, and ongoing reflection and introspection my mind was changed on many things.  God kept working at prying my heart open wider and wider to see God’s love revealed in folks I previously would have considered outside of God’s grace.

In the midst of the conflict and ugliness in the congregation I served before serving Connie’s congregation, I was overtaken by the question, “What would happen if a church decided to make loving one another and all the ‘others’ beyond it, its highest aim? What would happen if I, as a pastor, made love my mantra?”

When I interviewed with the congregation where Connie became a member, I was exhausted and dispirited from the dysfunction and conflict in my current congregation coupled with my own heartbreak swirling around my recent divorce. Connie’s congregation too, had been through a heartbreaking season of divisiveness. The search committee interviewing me for the job asked, “What about gay people? What about gay marriage? Would you perform one?”

I told the story about my own journey to a broader and more inclusive faith. I told the story of my respected colleague and friend whose faith was palpable and whose pastoral skills and love for God were contagious. I shared how that colleague coming out to me was the beginning of my transformation. I told them about reading Mel White’s memoir, Stranger at the Gate (Penguin Publishing Group, 1995), and how it helped me sort through the Biblical and theological baggage I had carried with me over the years.  I told them I had never officiated a gay marriage or commitment ceremony, but was ready and happily willing to do so. I also told them, “I understand this is still a controversial issue and this congregation has just been through hell. I understand you simply want and need some time to heal. I also understand that God’s love extends to all God’s children and it’s not our place to erect barriers to anyone who wants to share that love of God in full fellowship with us. So here’s what I’ll tell you, I will pray that God does not bring to this congregation anyone whom we are not yet ready to welcome with arms wide open in the inexhaustible love of God. I’ll pray that I will not be asked to officiate any marriage here until this congregation can fully share the couple’s joy.”

I was called to be the church’s pastor. Time passed, conversations among the elders and others, Bible studies etc. took place and when Peg and Nora came to worship on the recommendation of a minister in the town from which they recently moved, our congregation welcomed them with arms wide open. It wasn’t long before both held positions of leadership and service. They loved God and God’s people. That they were in love with each other was never an issue, in fact, their love increased our congregation’s love, because love is like that—it multiplies and expands. Love is love is love.

Later on, talking with a friend about how over time my mind had been changed and God had extended my understanding of the breadth and inclusivity of God’s love, I admitted I still struggled with the whole idea of people being transgender. “I just don’t get it.” I said. “I have a hard time seeing it as somehow, ‘normal.’” I told her I wasn’t where I wanted to be. I  knew I needed more understanding so when the time came to be welcoming and loving like God is welcoming and loving I’d be completely ready. I told her a classmate’s handsome husband had transitioned a few years earlier and I had been “weirded-out” by it. My friend said she’d loan a book to me. Jennifer Boylan’s 2003 memoir, She’s Not There: a Life in Two Genders (Broadway/Doubleday/RandomHouse) did for me part of what Mel White’s story did when I was working on coming to a better understanding of homosexuality.

Boylan’s book was on the back seat of my car when I pulled into the parking lot at Connie’s therapist’s office. I’d been driving around with it on my back seat for three or four weeks because I kept forgetting to return it after I finished reading it.

“Connie has something she wants you to know about her but she’s afraid to tell you because when she has told other pastors in other churches she has been ostracized and not allowed to remain in the church.”  I turned to Connie, thinking, pedophile? Murderer? Former felon? I said, “Connie, I don’t know what you’re about to tell me, but I promise you, whatever you tell me will not limit God’s love for you, nor will it limit your welcome in our congregation.” Connie, looking very nervous asked her therapist to tell me.

“Connie is transgender.”

So, maybe you saw this coming. I absolutely, sure as shootin’ at the time did not.

“I will pray that God does not bring to this congregation anyone whom we are not yet ready to welcome with arms wide open in the love of God.” Isn’t that just like God to take such good care of Connie that God prepared me just in time to be able to say, without hesitation, “Oh! Connie, God loves you so much.  You are loved and you are welcome. You are part of our congregation. You are God’s beloved daughter and I am glad to be your pastor.”

What would happen if we were to expend our Christian energy loving others extravagantly like God loves? What would happen if we quit squandering our Christian energy and tarnishing Jesus’ good name by narrowly drawing lines and boxes around who’s in and who’s out of God’s grace? What would happen in this weary, broken and fragmented world if we just let go and let God’s love fill us and flow through us, like it flowed through Jesus who opened his heart, his life, his arms wide for all of us?

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is love is love is of God.

 

 

 

*I change names and some details to protect confidentiality.

Wait

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I met a church member for lunch in mid-town today. She waited patiently while the parking meter and I conferred. Relieved as I was not to need change, which I’d forgotten, I got flustered when I couldn’t find the slot for entering my debit card in the new-fangled meter I parked behind. When I finally figured it out, inserted my card and removed it quickly as instructed on the little screen, the screen flashed back at me, “Wait.” “Wait.” “Wait.” “Wait.” “Wait.” “Wait.” “Wait.”

There were way too many waits. Before long my lunch companion and I had the giggles.

Waiting doesn’t always evoke giggles. Waiting can be hard.

Waiting for an eighteen year old who thinks she’s grown up already to grow up already,

Waiting for an addicted sibling to hit bottom,

Waiting for the divorce process to run its’ course,

Waiting for the results from the biopsy,

Waiting to hear back from the interview,

Waiting can be hard.

My birth mother waited 25 years hoping one day she could tell me she loved me and explain why she placed me for adoption. All she could do back then was wait. Adoption laws have changed and the internet has made virtually obsolete old state laws about confidentiality in closed adoptions.  But back then, all she could do was wait. Wait to see if I would contact the adoption agency looking for information.

When I looked it was for medical information. Thinking we might try to start our family while serving in Zaire, it seemed prudent to find out whatever I could about my family history. Maybe I had sisters who had already borne children. Maybe there were risks and complications I should be aware of before blithely becoming pregnant at the equator with limited medical care.

The social worker sent a form. “On this page please write about yourself. We have learned that birth parents are more willing to share information when they know something about the adopted adult seeking information.” What was I supposed to write? One page, no identifying information. I wrote my whole life story in three paragraphs and sent it by air-mail from France where we were in language school. Then I waited. Two weeks for the letter to make it to Omaha. At least two weeks to get a return letter from the social worker. When it came, all the medical information was updated. It had not been difficult to find my birth mom and she was happy to provide the requested information.  At the end of the form was a note, “your birth mother would like to make contact with you. Are you willing to exchange letters, through our agency, without sharing any identifying information? If so, we can begin the process even as you file the appropriate forms with the Secretary of State.”

Several weeks later our mailbox at Language School was filled with a fat manila envelope, filled with a long letter and many, many photos of people, “your Aunt Alice,” “your Aunt Ruth” “your Grandma” “your sister” “your sister” (but, none of my aunts were named Alice and my Aunt Ruth looked nothing like the woman in that photo and my beloved grandmothers had both died, and I had brothers, not sisters). I was disoriented by suddenly having a whole other family besides my own whom I had known all my life.

We had to wait a long while to meet each other and then to become more than strangers to each other. I was overwhelmed. I needed time. My birth mother was patient with me. She waited until I was ready to know her better.

Waiting isn’t easy, but, so many times in life we simply have to wait. We can’t control other people. We can’t control all the circumstances and moving pieces of our lives intersecting with the lives of others. Paul, the Apostle wrote to the Romans, “All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.” Sometimes it takes God awhile to get all the pieces lined up for that good to come to pass. Sometimes, when we get in too big a hurry, we throw monkey wrenches into the ways God is working. Getting impatient can backfire on us.

Sometimes I try to fix things, resolve things, and settle things before it’s time. I was working on doing just that about something earlier this summer when, on a Sunday in front of the whole congregation, while singing our closing hymn in church, the heavens opened and I heard the trumpets sound as a bright light shined down on me in the sanctuary. (Ok. It wasn’t like that at all). It was just the third verse of an oldie-moldy hymn spoke to me as if directly from God’s mouth to my ears. We were singing  “Take Time to Be Holy” when these words were God’s words directly to me, “Take time to be holy, let him be thy guide, and run not before him, whatever betide; in joy or in sorrow, still follow they Lord. And, looking to Jesus, still trust in his word.” ( W.D. Longstaff, 1882).

And run not before him… Sometimes the word of the day is “wait.” “Wait,” “Wait.” “Wait.” “Wait.”

Folding up a blanket

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Folding up a blanket. She was folding up a blanket. It’s such a normal thing to do I almost didn’t register what she was doing. I’d just done it myself a couple days earlier.

Last week I stayed several nights with my son and his love in their apartment. Adam cleared amplifiers and instruments out of his small music room to make room for an air mattress for me. On his desk, next to a happy red lamp was a “welcome Mom” note and a little painted nativity inside a gourd- a welcome gift for me.  I went to the Twin Cities for a quick, unplanned get-away when a weekend retreat for the church was cancelled at the last minute. The cancellation freed up my week and gave me time to rest my world-weary soul before fall programing begins in earnest at the church.

On Friday morning I folded up the blankets Adam and Elektra gave me to use, and I put them away in their living room. I rolled up my sheets and pillow cases and pillows.  Pulling the plug on the queen-sized air mattress, I was happy. It served me well enough, but it was a lot lower to the ground than I remembered it being when I used it last five years ago. As I put away my temporary bedroom I looked forward to sharing a king-sized bed at the Hampton Inn with Mike that night after he flew in for the weekend. The air mattress and pump, sheets, pillows and pillow cases all fit nicely in one big rectangular bag that I tossed into the trunk of my car before spending the day exploring the city with a cousin, also world-weary, whom I hadn’t seen in too long.

Two concerts, two art exhibits, sight-seeing, a little shopping (I had never been to IKEA before), long walks drinking in early autumn beauty, plenty of good food, time to finish a good book uninterrupted, time to repair some broken jewelry and to patch the elbows of a favorite jacket, sitting Zen meditation with Adam one morning in a beautiful Zen center (a first for me), a blazing fire pit on a beautiful evening, time alone, time with both Minneapolis offspring-sons, time to walk relaxed and hand-in-hand with Mike; it all added up to a wonderfully refreshing week.

Yesterday morning Mike and I didn’t make the bed, we just closed the door behind us and checked out of that Hampton Inn and put our bags in the trunk of my car. Instead of hopping on the freeway we took the longer, but more scenic, route through the city to wend our way to worship and later brunch with Jackson before hitting the highway for home.

Crossing town, we were stopped at a light when to my left I saw the young girl folding up a blanket. She was maybe 13 or 14. She had a long black pony tail. She and a young man were on the cement stoop in front of a business. The porch was small, maybe eight feet long and four feet wide across the front of the building. Another woman, just a little older looking, with a pock-marked face and her own long black ponytail stepped to the stop-light before waiting there for the others to join her.

The young girl was folding up a blanket. Maybe I wouldn’t even have noticed her if I hadn’t just folded up my own temporary bed two mornings earlier. I looked at them for several seconds before it registered with me, they slept on that stoop! Her blanket, folded first into thirds and then neatly rolled into a tight tube, would go with her wherever she was going to spend the day. They had no king-sized bed waiting for them at home, no temporary room for the night, not even an air mattress to soften that hard cement stoop. No cheerful red bedside lamp to read by late into the night. No window shades to draw to keep out lights from passing cars and the stares of strangers.

Our traffic light turned green and we drove away.

The girl folding her blanket went with me to worship. She was there when we prayed and when we communed. She, along with my suitcase and other bags, came home with me, too. She’s here, on my mind and in my heart. She was folding a blanket and it looked like a perfectly normal thing for her to do.

But, how can it be normal for kids to be homeless, sleeping on cement stoops and folding their blankets there the next morning for all the world, for tourists like me, to drive by and to see?

When did I see you homeless and pass you by, Jesus?

When did I see you without a bed and not offer you so much as the air-mattress packed in the trunk of my car as we drove by?

I left home for a few days because I was world-weary and I came home feeling more whole but carrying a kid with a long black ponytail folding a blanket.

We can’t continue to drive by and let that be normal, can we?

At Last

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When I climb into bed at night, I giggle. I’ve been giggling as I nestle under the sheets and onto my pillows for the past six and a half years and all indications are, the giggle isn’t going away. Mike noticed it first. “Do you realize you giggle when you crawl into bed next to me?” “Hmm! I guess I do” I agreed.

The giggle is pure delight. Mike is “at last this is flesh of my flesh” to me. Mike is home and my safest place. Mike is my other half. Seeing Mike makes me grin and I can’t help it. Between us, there’s a magnetic field of some sort—drawing us toward each other. We “met” on Match.com. The first time we met for coffee was two months, a whole lot of e-mails and phone calls later. One of my first thoughts when I sat across from him made me blush, Becky! I said, in my head with the inflection my mother might have used when slightly incredulous and to set me straight, what are you thinking? I was thinking, I’d like to run my fingers through his hair right there at his temples.

His eyes are gentle and kind and…they twinkle and the hair at his temples is a gorgeous gray, highlighting his smiling eyes.

We both lived a long time before we found each other.

Mike was married before. His marriage lasted twenty-two years and produced three great kids. He and his ex-wife eventually had different priorities and they were divorced. The failure of his marriage was painful. Mike’s a family man. In fact, he moved out of the family home into an apartment just a block away so he could continue to be a very present father for the two of his children still at home. Sad, angry, lonely he built a new life for himself. When we met he’d been divorced for three years, his marriage had been over except on paper and in living arrangements for several more than that.

I was married before. I was married for nineteen years and our marriage produced three great kids. My ex-husband struggled with mental health issues. For many years he blamed his depression and struggles on external stresses, circumstances and people. Then, I started to get more of the blame. I was sad and lonely and one of my wisest, dearest friends guessed it. She asked “are you happy?” I told her “no, I’m just figuring it out one day at a time. This is the ‘for worse’ of the ‘for better for worse’ parts of the vows.” She said she couldn’t do it. She said she was crazy about her husband and he was crazy about her. I said “all marriages take work”. She said, “and some simply don’t work.” I told her mine was working just fine (even though it wasn’t).

A few months later a neighbor down the street sat me down to tell me she was concerned about my kids. “I don’t think you know what’s happening when you’re away at the church.” I didn’t know. She described a conversation she overheard putting away laundry in the hall while my son and her son and another neighbor boy were hanging out in her son’s room. The anger that had been turned on me was being turned on my children, too.

The divorce was pretty hellish. I don’t know many people who make it through divorce unscathed, we sure didn’t. So, when all the dust settled, and I eventually had full-custody of the kids, I moved home to Nebraska to be near my aging parents and one of my brothers. They helped me and the boys heal, and my brother and I helped our parents navigate some cruel blows from aging.

For eight years I said I was wearing a hat with three bills. Above one it said, “Mom” above another it said, “Daughter” and above the third it said, “Minister.” I just spun the hat around my head depending on the moment. Nowhere on the hat was there room for anything that said, simply, “Becky.”

A bit of Becky time eventually came. My elder two graduated from high school, my youngest was a high school junior, my mother “graduated” too.  And that’s when Mike and I met.

I didn’t know what was missing in my life until I met Mike. I had no idea what marriage could really be even though I tried my darndest to make a good marriage the first go around. There are other stories to be told about divorcing and dealing with guilt and the fact that all of us “miss the mark” all of us fall short in different ways at different times in life. We can wrestle later with thoughts about divorce and sin and forgiveness and the Bible and making sense out of what ancient, yet still living documents teach us about God’s will.

But, I can say this for sure. Mike is a gift to me from God. Of that I have absolutely no doubt.

Mike and I are wholly married to each other in the holy way God imagined and dreamed for all God’s children. Genesis says God looked on God’s very good creation and realized something not yet perfected, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” said God. And God fashioned another human just perfect for the first. Flesh of each other’s flesh, bone of each other’s bone.

All of this story brings me closer to the point I want to make.

Mike and I have six young adult children. What I want desperately for each of them is that they find someone fashioned just right for them to journey with through life. I want each of them to dance with delight because they are so well loved and to find the embrace of one with whom they know they are “home.” One who, at last, is flesh of their flesh. I want them to shiver with the pleasures of intimacy and break into grins when their special other turns the corner. I want them to have that someone they trust and can count on when cancer strikes, when stress is high. I want them to giggle when they climb into bed next to each other even when they are growing old.

I want that for each of our six children and for you and for your children and our neighbors and for our neighbor’s children. And here’s the kicker–one of our kids is gay and that doesn’t change one bit my hopes and prayers and dreams–they are the same for all six of our kids. I want them to know, if they want to know, I want them to really know love. I want them not to have to live life alone. And not to have to pretend to be who they aren’t because there isn’t anything more lonely than that. I don’t care if the one my kid loves is he, she or they. I want them to find the one for whom they say, “at last.”

Once upon a time and even now, there are those so caught up in religious rules and regulations they would deny the holiness of the love Mike and I share because we were both married before. And right now, this very week when there’s so much hurt and so much heart ache and sorrow out there and each of us needs another to shore us up and help us find home, this very week there are religious zealots who have written a heinous and ugly declaration denying the holiness of love to those who are LGBTQ+.

To them I say, Stop it already! God’s love is bigger than your limited imaginations.

And to God I say, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for second chances. Thank you for the gift of my Mike. Thank you that as soon as I finish writing and click “publish” I will go upstairs and climb into bed and giggle as I nestle under the sheets and onto my pillows and next to my already sleeping sweet husband.

Thank you, God. Thank you. Thank you.

Still Speaking

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Mrs. Clark opened her door after I knocked. “I was baking bread this morning and thought of you. Here’s a loaf. I hope you like it.”  She took in a deep breath, bowed her head and crumpled forward like a flower drooping. Bringing her clasped hands up to her chest a second passed before she breathed again and straightened to meet my gaze. “You remembered.” She said. “You remembered. It’s been a year today since my Walter died.” We visited a little bit there on her cozy front porch before I headed back down the street two houses to my own house where one of my babies was napping and the other two needed to be picked up from nursery school.

I didn’t remember it was the anniversary of her Walter’s death but I let Helen think whatever she wanted to think. But here’s what happened:

I’d been at the church the night before. There was a meeting and as was fairly common for that congregation someone acted ugly about something. Some congregations are truly skilled at arguing about things about which Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God Almighty and all the angels don’t give a rat’s patootie. This congregation got a lot of things right, but boy–howdy some of them sure could act ugly. And sometimes they directed that ugliness at us, their co-pastors. Even when it wasn’t aimed directly at us, some of it usually splattered in our direction.

When I climbed into bed I congratulated myself for not being worked-up about the ugliness. My skin must be getting thicker, I thought. I’ve been doing ministry long enough I’ve learned to let things just roll off my back. I thought. Hmm. I thought, a little over ten years into this and I’m getting the knack of it.

At two a.m. I woke up because someone was sobbing. It took me a moment to realize the person sobbing was me. With a sleeping husband beside me and three sleeping little boys across the hall I stifled myself quickly. And then as I was just waking up to my heart-wrenching doubts that so frequently follow on the heels of church members complaining–I’m not cut out to be a minister, this has all been some big mistake–I heard, in my head, but plain as day, an instruction, “Go downstairs and read.”

For years and years a thin little volume called, A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants (Rueben P. Job and Norman Shawchuck, Nashville: The Upper Room, 1983.) has been my frequent companion, spiritual guide and source of strength. The morning of the church meeting I skipped my prayer time. The boys were little, life was demanding and I just skipped praying (it happens!) In our family room at 2:00 am I turned to the words I missed in the morning, the words I was told to go downstairs to read. The Psalm was about God not abandoning us in a pit. And one of the readings for reflection was from St. Teresa of Avila (Way of Perfection). Part of it read,

Sometimes, too, God allows his servants to have stormy days…although they are distressed and seek to calm themselves, they are unable to do so…Let them not tire themselves seeking to infuse sense into an understanding which is, at the moment incapable of it. But let them pray as well as they can and even not pray at all, but consider the soul to be sick and give it some rest, busying themselves in some other act of virtue.

Wow! I read the words again and again. They sure seemed to be written just for me, just for right then.

I spent the rest of that sleepless night writing a letter to one of our youth group kids who was going through a rough time and making some bad choices in the process and then baking bread so there was a fresh loaf for my family to wake up to and another to share.

By mid-morning I was wondering if I was maybe a little crazy for thinking God had time or inclination to call me downstairs in the night.  But then I took the loaf of bread to Helen Clark for no real reason other than she was the first person who came to mind when I thought about what to do with it.

I bowed my head on my way home from her house. I don’t know how, I don’t understand God’s mysterious ways, but it sure seemed to me, I’d just been used.

I’d just been used by God to carry comfort in the form of freshly baked bread to a woman who needed comforting, and in the process God lifted me from my own little pit of church drama and self-doubt to comfort me, too.

I don’t usually hear instructions in the night. But if God spoke to Joseph and Samuel and others of his servants in dreams and in that still small voice long ago, based on that one night when my children were young and I was, too, I have to believe, as our United Church of Christ brothers and sisters affirm, God is still speaking today. It’s up to us to be sure we listen.

In Bondage

~ Everydaystories ~ 1 Comment

I’m in bondage this morning to two overflowing hampers of dirty laundry.  A shortage of clean undergarments has become a near-crisis. Guests over the weekend disrupted the laundry-doing cycle and contributed three extra sets of sheets and towels to the normal weekly wash. The washing machine will be busy most of this morning. The nice thing about doing laundry is I can do my sermon-writing around it. Breaks to fold and to spray-and-wash stains gives my eyes a break from the computer screen and my brain a break to re-group and think through transitions.

Later today I’m meeting a church member to wash and sort toys in the church nursery. We’re moving the nursery from a great-big room at the end of a long hallway to a smaller, more infant and toddler friendly sized room closer to where most of the Sunday morning action is. Last week when we met we culled the collection of toys and pulled out at least five large garbage bags full of things to donate and another two or three to throw in the trash.

These are the days when I lament. We’re drowning in So.Much.Stuff. The Pixar movie Wall-e haunts me. Poor little Wall-e the trash compactor robot left to roam the earth after humans have fled to cruise-ship like spaceships, trying to compact all the trash piled all over it—I feel his pain especially on days like today.

I know why the church nursery has so many, many toys. People donate their children’s and grand-children’s gently-used toys and over time they just accumulate.

I know why I have all these sets of sheets and towels and extra beds. Mike and I have six adult children between us. We want them to feel free to come home to visit and to bring friends with them when they are able. I have all this laundry to do because we aim to be hospitable–but still, the mounds on my laundry room floor and the bags of toys for the Salvation Army store and the garbage bin remind me of a story from years ago.

I was twenty-six years old and just setting up house in Zaire. The two of us (my ex-husband and I) had been assigned a four bedroom home built by and for Disciple missionary families in the forties or fifties. The house had a lot of windows and I can sew, so an afternoon visit to the merchants in Mbandaka ten miles away provided me with ten dress-lengths of fabric from which to make curtains. The next morning the fabric was piled on a chair in our living room when Bontongu, one of our students at the Pastor’s Training Institute, came to help us out around the house. His eyes widened when he saw the stack of fabric. I told him I was going to make curtains from it and he nodded, still wide-eyed. He said, “My wife has one dress length of fabric from which she made her dress. It is the only one she has since she was full-grown.”

Later that same week Bontongu saw a couple broken drinking glasses in our kitchen trash. He asked if he could have them. “They’re broken.” I said. He nodded. “They’re sharp. You’ll be cut on them.” I said. He said, “I will use a stone to rub the sharp edges until they are smooth and we will be the only family in the school with our own drinking glasses.”

When I get to feeling that I’m in bondage to too much stuff I think of Bontongu who had next to nothing in material possessions and I remind myself that mine is a bondage of my own choosing. Nobody has ever forced me to buy anything. If I want to do something about having too much stuff, the good news is, I can.

Benediction

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I witnessed something breathtakingly beautiful yesterday.

It was ten minutes before worship. I was in the sanctuary greeting people and making sure everything was in place. I’m going to say the man’s name is Stan. I’m guessing he’s in his late seventies. In his prime he was a stellar athlete, an outstanding baseball player. Now it takes him twenty minutes just to walk from the sidewalk outside our building into the sanctuary and find his seat in the pew. When Stan walks, the man who used to soar around the bases is curled into the shape of the letter “C.” Lingering back injuries and Parkinson’s disease have ravaged his body. As Stan and I were chatting, little children were running around in the aisles.

I’ll say her name is Kaya. She’s just turned two years old and is as cute as any two year old child to whom God has ever given the gift of life. I mean, she’s make-your-innards-ache cute. Yesterday her red gingham dress was simply icing on the cuteness-cake. From the opposite end of our very long pews she spied me and squealed my name, “Dr. Becky!” Making a bee-line for me I reached my hand in front of Stan to receive Kaya’s spirited high-five. What joy!

Not one to stay in one place very long, Kaya turned and headed back to the other end of the pew. I said, “Kaya, wait.” She stopped and looked at me quizzically. “How about giving Mr. Stan a high-five, too?” She nodded her perfect little head, grinned her perfect little smile and came back. Looking directly up into Stan’s face, Kaya gave him “five” but it was a different gift than that which she bestowed on me. She was more gentle in her approach and then, just as she was about to pull her hand away quickly the way one does when “giving-five,” Kaya paused and simply rested her perfect little hand on top of Stan’s age-ravaged hand and looked him, kindly, in the eye before turning and running to the other end of the pew.

Did I mention, Kaya’s just turned two? It’s only been a month or two since she clung tightly to her mama or tata and peeked shyly from behind their legs.

A crippled-up, proud and kind old man, received his benediction, his blessing on his day, as a free gift from an impossibly beautiful cherub, just before formal worship began.

And God was in that place. And God was in that moment. And tears were in our eyes. And a little child led us.

I love the church.

I Haven’t been bored

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Daniel, my middle son, was about eighteen months old when I walked into our kitchen and found him perched on top of the refrigerator. When he was six, I walked into the dining room and found him just hanging out at the top of the open door frame. He’d shimmied up with his bare feet and was perched there like some blonde-headed birdie. When he was fifteen, I opened the door from the kitchen into our garage to take out the recycling and was surprised to find the garage door up and one of Dan’s friends standing facing me in the driveway with his video camera aimed slightly up.

I dropped the recycling in the bin and nonchalantly sauntered toward Dan’s buddy. We nodded at each other and slowly I turned to see what he was filming. Perched on the edge of the garage roof was Daniel in his bright yellow bike helmet wearing knee pads on his bare legs, poised…with his pogo stick ready to jump.

“Hi Mom.”

“Whatcha doin’, Daniel?”

“This is going to be epic! It will make a really great video for YouTube.”

“Wrong. Dan. It’s not happening.”

“But, Mom!”

“Nope. You’re going to take your pogo stick and drop it onto the front lawn over there and climb down the ladder and put the ladder away.”

“Come on, Mom. I’ve got my helmet.”

“No Dan. You have my permission to jump off anything you want on your pogo stick when you’re a full grown man, paying your own medical insurance and your own homeowner’s insurance, but right now everything’s on my ticket and I get to say, ‘no way’.”

I’m waiting up for full-grown adult Daniel tonight. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA but has work to do in the Midwest this week. Frozen, ready to bake cookies (a softball team fundraiser for one of the church youth group kids) are in the oven. The guest beds are made. Sandwiches are ready to be thrown together if he and his crew of two traveling with him are hungry when they arrive. The crew are professional stunt pogo-stickers and Daniel is in management for the X-Pogo Corporation. It’s crazy, right? Little did I know when I made Dan get down from my garage roof that day that a little over a decade later he would be earning his living off of kids doing tricks on pogo sticks.

I briefly was engaged to be married when I was still in college. I was way too young to be getting married, and he was not the right man and it didn’t take too long for me to come to my senses (that time) but, I remember telling my Dad, “Dad I can already see exactly what my life is going to be like when I marry him. He’ll finish school, I’ll finish school. He’ll work. We’ll have kids. It’s going to be boring.” Daddy said simply, “Oh, believe me Becky, once you have kids your life will never be boring.”

My dad was right. One of the very best parts of my life is being a mom. I loved the craziness of having three little boys three and under. I was glad my years as a soccer mom were short, children’s musical theater mom years were splendid, Children’s Opera Chorus mom years were sublime, punk-rock mama years coincided with my becoming a single mom. Those years were tough but tolerable with good ear plugs. I wasn’t much use as a Marching Band mom, but the boys did fine. I managed not to be too much of a helicopter mom as the boys tested their wings. And now, they’re scattered, New York City, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh. Mike’s kids, too, are grown and mostly gone and on their own.

I probably should have let Dan jump off the roof that day. He’s landed on his feet everywhere life’s taken him so far. For tonight, though, I have absolutely no regrets. I’m simply glad life’s bringing him home to hang around for a few days. Being Dan’s mom has not once been boring and for that and for him I will always be thankful.