Preachin'

A great moment happened at work today. I work for a Catholic health care system. We're supposed to begin every meeting with a prayer. Half the time we don't do it, and the other half of the time someone reads some trite proverb from a One-A-Day calendar and calls it a prayer. At this morning's meeting the designated leader forgot their prefabbed prayer, so I volunteered to pray. Everyone was mightily impressed by how readily I could call up the old Almighty and ask his blessing with no advance warning. I told them, "Me and God, we're like this," then I held up my crossed fingers.

It's true. I talk to God ALL the time. It starts first thing when I wake up. Before I even open my eyes, I say in my head, "God, I am really gonna need you today. There is no way I'm gonna make it without you." I start the day by reading a little scripture, and I keep a New Testament at my desk for emergencies throughout the day. (I have at least one personality crisis per day at work - I guess it's not really an emergency if it happens all the time.) The point is, I've never felt quite so connected to God in my life as I do right now, during this darkest of dark struggle to finally bring my child home.

I have thought a lot lately about how the heck I got to this point of dire need and utmost faith. I have followed Jesus since about age three, when my mom told me that the nice guy they taught about in Sunday School could come live in my heart. I always had imaginary friends, so it wasn't much of a stretch to imagine a benevolent, loving, invisible adult following me around and looking out for me. And I always talked to myself, so prayer came naturally - like talking to myself with someone actually listening.

My mom led me to Jesus first, and then my dad taught me about following Jesus. Dad always tried to make decisions based on what God wanted, not what he wanted. When I finally got old enough to make decisions that mattered, I did the same thing. And it was great! Whenever I was following Jesus, things worked out. I followed Jesus to Mizzou, instead of my dream school of NYU. I had the time of my life there, and I met the love of my life. I prayed hard over which job to take out of college. I did what I thought God wanted, and I excelled as a cub reporter at the Asheville Citizen-Times. PC and I prayed over his job placement out of seminary, and we landed the perfect congregation.

Then, little by little, things stopped working out the way I wanted. I didn't get exactly the job I hoped for when we moved here. I stayed positive, though, because I had a fall-back plan. I would become a mother, which had truly been my dream job my whole life. Well, here I am, years later, drowning in sorrows and longings, very unsure of how things got so desperate. Sometimes I want to curse God and turn away, but I can't. My whole life is structured around the premise that Jesus loves me and saved me. If I stop believing, I don't just lose my faith. I lose my marriage, my home, my friends, my career - everything that brought me to this place would be meaningless.

I have come to a deep understanding of a story from the Bible where Jesus is doing some hard core, in-your-face preaching. Lots of people didn't like what he had to say and walked out on his sermon. When Jesus finished, he looked over at his 12 disciples and said, "You do not want to leave to, do you?" These disciples were the guys who left their jobs, their churches, their money and their families to go on the road with Jesus. And maybe they did want to leave. But Peter put it this way, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." When I was talking with PC the other night, I explained it like this: "I have followed Jesus so long that I have no place left to go except forward into his loving arms."

God has given me two great gifts. First, when I was very young, he made it possible for me to believe in him. Then, later on, he made it impossible for me not to believe. The harder things get, the more I talk it out with God. The harder things get, the more time I spend reading the Bible, learning and studying and understanding what it all means. The harder things get, the more I flock to church, sometimes three times on Sunday. If following Jesus has brought me all this pain, then why do I keep going back for more? The only answer I can come up with is because he is real. Jesus is as real as my own flesh. And when the world has broken all its promises to you, when words have lost their comfort and you can't believe what anyone says, you would rather have something real to hold onto than something happy. At least, I would. And I'm so thankful that God has given me a real Savior and a real faith to get me through to the next thing, which might turn out to be even worse than this present trial, to be honest. But it will be real - as real as I'll be forever and ever when I'm finally with Jesus for good.

I don't preach that often on the blog, but here are some of my greatest hits:

On Easter
And Christmas