Mine the Day

I feel like I've been in the twilight zone the past while.  Several long days with my mother in hospital and evenings and nights alone in my parents' big house that creaks as the temperature changes.  My dad returns from an overseas trip at the end of this week. Meanwhile, I'm thankful for siblings and others who support me, the local supporter, by email, phone and prayer.  This evening I hope to return to the house with my mother gingerly in tow.  It's just the beginning of this health "adventure"for her.

Been thinking of "mining the day" for several weeks now.  Different from seizing it I think.  I'm looking for "allusions" for one thing.  Physical references to less tangible truths and preferably uplifting ones.  I'm also hunting for beauty.   And, of course and always, humor.

I'm surveying my findings so far. Driving to the hospital yesterday I passed a small community garden with a big sign saying "The Hug Farm". Made me smile.  A song on the radio played a tune with something about "you're not wandering alone".  Reminded me of a desolate time living alone in a city when the very moment I thought "no one knows I'm here" a person I'd met in another country suddenly drove by and said hello.  As for beauty, I defy seasonal cliche' and say I'm nearly floored by the burning intensity of the fall oranges mixed with deep purple,  or burgundy and green sharing two sides of leaves like taffeta. These are colors that paint can't mix. Colors plugged into a power source.

As for humor, yes, finding some of that too.  A bumper sticker yesterday said "Save a life, spay or neuter." Ok...so saving which life? The life or litter you're preventing? Even mildly illogical statements amuse me. Also entertained by the 3.5 stars of 5 rating hospital which is certainly that because of the meal delivery.  Two days ago, my mom's "lunch" came at 3 pm, which was after my several requests. But dinner/supper was early.  4:30 pm, actually. The exact same meal.  Almost brilliantly terrible service. I'm glad my mother has a good sense of humor.  We'll all need it in days and months to come.

This will be a quickly written one.  Interesting to observe my parents and their two completely different views on friendships.  It's come to light especially this week.  My normally very energetic mother (she's actually been called "effervescent") has been in the hospital for 8 days.  First it looked like a bad flu, which she never gets, then suspected pneumonia, and the latest, a spot on her lung with further tests.  All this to say, everyone in her family is either out of the country or several hours away by car.  My dad is actually on a ship in the Middle East.

My Mother is being steadily inundated and supported with visits by friends and people from church. She has always been a good friend to many, showing up faithfully, conversing warmly and putting down roots wherever she lives.  Now it's all coming back to her and then some.  My dad, on the other hand, insists from afar that having family nearby is always the best and is dismissive about the value of friends.  This is a man who travels the world, has a vast data base of "contacts", and whose own parents both had funerals with no more than 5 people in attendance.  I was at one of those. Shocking, really.

For me, friends are my family close by.  Maybe this is a wake up call for me to value them even more and tell them so.  Disturbing as my Mother's situation is, it's gratifying to watch her enjoy the fruits of her cultivated relationships.

Jewel Bright and Allusion

This morning I woke up early enough to go walking in the fog, my favorite kind of weather.  It almost physically draws me out of the house like a huge magnet.  I love how vastly mysterious and diffused everything is.  There's a country-ish dead end street nearby that I go to which ends with an unassuming church wrapped by a steeply sloped parking lot. A soccer field beyond that, sitting in a bowl of grassy hills, tree topped, and who knows what further on.  I walk loops and eights around the parking lot.  I mull over life, pray, ponder rhymes or melodies.  Mull some more.  It's a good place to cry too, which I usually don't around people.

On my last loop this morning I looked over at the soccer field disappearing in the mist like a portal to the hereafter. If Peter Pan faith was all it took, I'd be through it in a moment.  But of course it's just an illusion, or perhaps, more hopefully, an allusion.

The mistyness is leaving by the time I reach home again.  A bit later this morning I'm outside out again.  Now the sun is in full, fall splendor and behold, it's my favorite kind of...grass!  Be-sprinkled with dew drops and back lit to diamond glory.  Always this reminds me of a C.S. Lewis book describing arrival in Paradise as where "the grass was jewel-bright".  I can't even recall which book.  The Great Divorce maybe. This sparkling grass, another gift of allusion.    

Sandals

I hope I'm not wearing anyone out with stuff about my Freedom Session homework.  I hate to be tiresome, but it's what's on my mind these months.  Sigh...feeling that lack of a "best friend" or perpetually available and interested listening ears.  I guess the people who would be that if it were possible are the minds I'm writing to.  Honestly, if I didn't have such a perpetually lonely trail through a lot of my soul, I would never have started any of this blogging or much other creative stuff.

Anyway.  This week our assignment is a simple Bible reading exercise to train us Freedom Session folk in the art of listening to God.  For 6 days we have these categories to fill out:

Today I read : (Bible passage)

Most significant reference to me:

Main idea:

How it impressed me and/or applies to my life:

When we did a practice version in class, we were encouraged to directly ask God what He wanted to tell us personally through the passage.  Then we had to spend time listening to what He had to say. Not just read and run.  Actually waiting quietly with the real expectation that He would say something to our spirit.  

For my first homework in this assignment I read the last few verses of Joshua 5 where brave but unaware Joshua meets the angelic commander of God's armies just before Israel goes out to meet the enemy.  Once Joshua discovers who the angel is, he asks for instructions.  Verse 15, which I marked as my most significant reference, gives the answer, "Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy."  

I wrote down that God is telling me that "tomorrow" is not my problem.  My only job is to focus on and worship God in this very moment.  I've actually gotten more "aggressive", for lack of a better word, about clinging onto God's invisible feet.  Even if He has to drag me down the path I don't let go until He lets me know again, even with the tiniest peace, that He is with me. Probably sounds more like desperation than worship. But for me it's progress in my frequent sense of desolation. 

Walls and Walking

I just skimmed the online version of Relevant magazine and found an article by Tim Keller on 5 ways to deal with suffering.  From my short short-term memory, here are a couple things:

Don't passively let suffering chip away at you or make you hardened and bitter.  Suffering is about refining character.  Producing gold. (Yes, I've heard that a lot, but I needed it again and still) I'm trying to remember that gold is desirable, valuable, beautiful and eternal.  It's not all about the kiln and fire that feels like it will destroy us.  Too easy to focus only on that part.  Mostly, though, I was struck by Tim's comment that we have to walk through suffering.  Not just sit by or lie down and die.  Not race ahead to get it over with. It's a matter of daily making progress in a steady way. It's an actual going somewhere, even if the same long trial feels like being timelessly glued to pain.

For some reason this connects for me with my reading in Joshua 6 this morning.  The people of Jericho are paralyzed by fear and fortifying themselves behind walls that will betray and destroy them.  The Israelites, on the other hand, are simply walking around these walls.  The have visual proof in the Ark of the Covenant that God is walking with them.  For the first 6 days of 7 there is nothing else for them to do.  It's a steady keeping on which, at that point in the story, looks utterly pointless and unproductive. It's something I want to think more about.  Those 6 days of walking around the insurmountable with God at their side.

Blue Thread

There's a built-in loneliness in my life.  A thin blue thread that is stitched through every one of my days.  I live with much kindness I dare not take for granted. I am blessed with it. But it is a kindness that does not and can never understand or love what I love.  We are oil and water.  Two paths along the river with few bridges between them.  Two sets of dreams that will never meet.

It has been a major reason for me to go through these months of Freedom Sessions.  About 5 weeks remain and I wonder if there's been any progress in my soul.  I look at our homework questions this week:

1. What do I believe about Jesus Christ on this issue? Do I believe He cares about this?
2.  Do I believe God can help me deal with this in a better way?
3.  How would a person who does believe God cares about this pain or issue respond?

I honestly get stuck at the question of whether God cares. Or rather what difference it makes tangibly in my life.  Sure, I can believe He cares, but if my life does not change, does it really matter or mean anything? I don't want to be irreverent.  I also cannot pretend.  Today I journaled and looked back at another blue thread season in my life.  We prayed 8 long years for a second child.  It was as if we lived in mourning for someone who had never arrived.  We offered faith that didn't understand anything.  It was all we had. From today I see the brighter thread that has since been tied to and stitched from the first one. She's nearly 10 now.

But how can this ongoing thing be redeemed? If I truly believed God cared, wouldn't I calmly trust that all this had a good purpose and outcome?  That something beneficial and even beautiful could come in the midst of this and eventually out of it.  Wouldn't I be looking harder and more eagerly for the daily evidences of Divine Love that knows me and takes care of my soul's needs in unexpected ways? I do see them.  Gifts that feed me along the path. Gifts I cannot lean on, but they sustain me.  I want to believe today when I cannot understand.  I long for the brighter thread I may see only in the next world.

  

Resurrected

      Ok, not quite back from the dead, but I'm feeling more "myself"since the last entry. A pretty low point in a low season.  Driving up to an object or event looks much different from leaving it again. A good deal of me never wants to look back.  Done and done. But, the tiny voice in my head says give it a quick review.  Something useful may emerge.

     Frankly I feel embarrassed at how depressive I actually was, and probably still can tend toward being at times.  Is all my writing about hard stuff? Moping? I am challenged by other people who are perpetually near drowning under their own lives.  They gravitate toward me.  I find it somewhat draining long term and don't want to be like that for others. This is less consideration and more my excessive fear of seeming weak or needy.

      A few discoveries along the recent way to healing physically and otherwise.  Not rocket science, but the whole trouble started with a very hard season of life, not surprisingly for me around music. Someone else took over the piano completely several years ago for some months where I normally played with a band. Back then my music was me.  I felt annihilated.  No separate sense of self.  No long term perspective on the situation. Almost immediately I needed two root canals.  Things went steadily down hill from then on.  Rejection, stuck literally in my jaw.  Eventually broad scale deterioration on a few levels. Me rejecting myself.

     A holistic practitioner excavated more foundations of self-rejection that I had to renounce. Literally had to, to survive.  Recently, there are more glimmers of my objective identity.  My unconditional worth. This gets tested all the time.  Some people's opinion matters far more to me than most.  Some really see, know and even like me.  When they are preoccupied or even move out of town I can't be leaning on any of it.