Monsters Under the Bed, Part 2

I decided long ago to live open, stay kinetic, and be brave. Yesterday’s post was hard, though. It was too fresh, too new of a revelation, and too raw of a hurt. The funny thing was that I didn’t know that fear existed in me before yesterday! It took a bad case of Writer’s Block and some Divine Drain-O to figure it out. Then it was even harder posting it because blogging, for me, isn’t an anonymous endeavor. I am a volunteer pastor at a local church and many of them read this blog.  I also write the small group curriculum and often use concepts that initially hammered out here. So last night, at small group, I had the dubious privilege of sharing one of my deepest, darkest fears with 15 other people (and which ever of the 45 other small groups in our church used this week’s curriculum).  I wanted to go home and hide under my covers and never come out again. It was horrifying and awful but, at the risk of sounding cliché, I knew that God wanted me to do it.

Now, I don’t know if God used that story to help anyone else significantly. Topics like fighting fear with love usually take seed slowly and grow even slower (obviously!)- I suspect that I won’t know if my words had an impact on anyone for years. I hope they did, though, because I know God used them to help me. Articulating my fears forced me to admit that they existed, turn them around, examine them and understand them.

Then God pulled one of his “God Things” out and taught me a lesson or two.

Mere hours after I posted about Monsters Under the Bed, gifts started showing up. Gifts that took time and energy to make. Gifts that said, “I know who you are!” from people whom I’d never shared this fear with before.  Last night a boxed gift set and a gift card to a restaurant and a kindly worded note, a rare smile from a sad-eyed woman I’ve often prayed for, a chance to hold a long-anticipated baby boy, a card in the mailbox with another gift, and this morning a box of handcrafted soaps and lotions. I know when a so-called coincidence is not a coincidence. These weren’t just gifts that were purchased in haste because of a perceived pity party.

And you were there, and you were there, and..

God KNEW!  I’m so humbled and amazed by a God who has given me my heart’s desire and then took the time to help me see it: a community that has embraced me and my quirky family completely. I still struggle with that fear but it is diminished now. The day He asked me to confront it was the day he crushed its head with, of all things, humble pie as I realized that what I longed for was mine all along. And humble pie never tasted so good. It was very Wizard Of Oz.

It made me think of God in a whole new light. Well, perhaps not. Perhaps it is better to say it helped me understand Him in a whole new way because my head often “knows” what my heart cannot yet comprehend. Today as I looked at our Christmas tree with all of its shining ornaments, I envisioned God much like a parent at Christmas time. Grinning in anticipation as He wraps a gift while listening to an angelic chorus caroling in the background (but it has to be a live chorus because he’s God and probably doesn’t need an iPod). Maybe there’s even a glass of wine. Either way, the gifts He has prepared for me are for me alone. I just have to wait til he gives them. Or, in this case, until he shows me how to play with them.

Thank you, God, for community. Thank you for friends. Thank you for a place to belong. I see them now. And Merry Christmas to you, too.