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.. |
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.
