Prince’s classic “1999”
begins with “I was dreaming when I wrote this forgive me if it goes astray,”
and I’m going to make the same disclaimer. At 2:34 am I woke up to the sounds
of a lovely lightning storm, but being the insomniac that I am, I did not fall
back asleep. Most of this was composed at that time, so forgive me if it goes a
bit astray as well.
It has been a rough couple of weeks as anyone around me can
attest. If things continue on their current trajectory, I’m just going to
declare it a bad month since we’re almost half-way through May. I say it’s been
a rough couple of weeks with the understanding, that 90% of the things of the
things that have happened are not terrible things in any great sense. I
realize that over the same period of days:
- The world finally caught on to the story that 200 girls in Nigeria were kidnapped from school and are being held hostage
- The Ukraine
- MERS
- Tornado season has caused multiple deaths and millions of dollars in damage
- Among my network of friends there has been death in families, job uncertainty, medical issues and surgery, and the uncertainty that follows good things like moving to new locations and starting new jobs and new families
- A friend’s daughter with an autoimmune disorder has been hospitalized for at least the second time in the past 6 months; and she’s 6 and her family is one of the most amazing families I know
- My mom and brother were in an 8 car wreck on Saturday, which was a chain reaction caused by a drunk driver. Both were thankfully okay, but the car is in bad shape
In conclusion, I know that my troubles are not of any great
stature or suffering. But I’ve also been told that feeling sad and angry and
hurt are not feelings that should automatically be brushed away. We feel them
for a reason. In the past week my intelligence, emotional state, physical
endurance, and patience have all been questioned and tried. There are days when
I feel that it’s been a good thing just to keep my head above water. I’m
feeling very small. I’ve been trying to process those feelings (my social work
friends would be impressed) and woke up Monday morning resolved that it was a
new week and a clean slate.
And then I found a bottle of urine in my car. Thanks
universe.
Over the course of the previous night someone had broken
into my car, stolen about $100 worth of stuff, and left a bottle of urine. If
that’s not an entirely unwelcome thing to discover, it’s even more unwelcoming
at 6:40 am on a Monday morning.
Elizabeth and I went to ULTA last night for some retail
therapy/to buy a top coat that would keep my nails from chipping. I acknowledge
that retail therapy isn’t the best way to deal with emotions, but sometimes
something as simple as a new coat of nail polish can do wonders for a weary
soul. I ended up purchasing a kit that was on sale which (when used correctly)
makes it look like you have stars on your fingers. It works.
I have nebulas on my
fingertips.
The ability to paint the heavens on my fingertips is a very
symbolic and therapeutic endeavor. My smallness is dwarfed by the infinity of
creation. The first time I really felt close to God was my senior year of high
school in Hunt, Texas. We were on an Advanced Leadership Workshop with the
Texas Association of Student Councils. It was February and on the first night
we walked in a darkened field to a fire pit. Hunt has the lack of light pollution
one associates with fields forty minutes outside the nearest town. In the pitch
black of the night, you can look up and see not just stars, but entire
galaxies. In Houston I’m lucky to see Orion’s Belt. In Hunt I realized how
truly small I was because there were more stars in places farther away than I
could conceive, some of them already dead and still shining. I felt so tiny,
but at the same time utterly important because I just understood that the God
that had orchestrated so much I couldn’t fathom loved me for me. I go back to
the stars when I need to be reminded of that.
I painted stars on my fingers because I need that reminder
right now. Of all the things that happened in the last week, the worst was someone challenged
my faith. Not challenged in the posed a question about my faith that I couldn’t
answer, but suggested that I don’t listen for God in my life. It stung the way
that a blast of steam stings the skin. A painful burst that leaves the skin raw
and burning for days. Initially it hurt because of the accusation. But it
continues to sting. I think the reason it hurts is because part of me
thinks she is right.
Deep breathe, I’m struggling to hear God speak to me. In all
of my memories I can’t think of a time that God was directly speaking to me in
a continual speech. I’m largely okay with that because I think I do enough
talking on my own. But the last few months have been a struggle. And it’s
painful because in the recesses of my mind someone who is involved in a church,
teaching in a church, reading her bible daily, a seminary graduate, someone who
prays, etc. should be good at carrying on a dialogue and not a monologue. I can’t
tell when I first noticed it. I know it felt absent during Lent, but it was
Lent. Then it continued into May…
What hurts me is that I don’t know if God just isn’t
responding or if I just can’t hear the response. There’s an aching feeling with
either conclusion. If it’s a God-end reason it hurts because I’m desperately pleading
to hear something. I keep praying, but I’m losing hope that I’ll hear anything
back. We studied Psalm 88 on Sunday. I’m glad we did because it’s canonical and
at least hints at the reason to be faithful even when you aren’t hopeful. Hope is in short supply, but I think faith is abounding. I don't believe we always realize that one isn't the other.
On the other hand, the accusation might be valid. Maybe I’ve
just lost my ability to hear God. Things strike more fervently when there’s a
grain of truth in them. I don’t know what happened, but I do know that things
are quiet and I wish they wouldn’t be so. Why? I feel like I’m trapped in a
tunnel that I can’t find the end of anymore. I hear voices of friends and
family around me telling me to keep going forward, but I don’t see the light to
get out. The voices are incredibly helpful, so please don’t stop calling out
for me and guiding me along. But maybe I'm the one squinting my eyes shut and I don't remember how to open them.
There’s a song by Matt Maher entitled “Hold Us Together.”
The bridge is my favorite part of the entire song:
“This
is the first day of the rest of your life,
This is
the first day of the rest of your life,
‘Cause
even in the dark you can still see the light,
It’s
gonna be alright, it’s gonna be alright.”
I have swirling nebulas painte on my nails to see the stars
since I can’t see them from my balcony, because right now I need to see those
pinpricks in the dark to remind me that things will be alright.
I hope.
"Everything passes away-suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?"
-Mikhail Bulgakov
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