AND GRACE WILL SET US FREE

Every Sunday, it's the same struggle. Two kids who don't want to go to church are scrubbed, dressed, and sent out to the car, always at the last minute. No matter what time I get started, we always seem to be leaving right when we are supposed to get there. Realistically, we are always about ten minutes late - the amount of time it would take me to get the youngest situated in some kind of other activity besides sitting next to me in service, struggling to sit still and be quiet. So there we are, and there we struggle.
Every Sunday, it's the same thing. It's the struggle with him to keep his mouth from running, a million little disturbances, the occasional dirty looks from people around us. Luckily, I think, we have choices between two services, and this one I always choose, because it's not nearly as quiet of a service as the other one, not nearly as serious, so not nearly as high of a penalty. If I had my choice between the two, I would choose the other - the other service going on next door is more mentally engaging, whereas this one, the contemporary service, is more emotionally based. There is always something about it, though, that makes me feel God at a heart level, instead of a head level, and this week, it was no exception.
There is live music, and colors swirling, and darkness inside the heart of the church, and pictures projected on to twin screens on either side of the stage, the words to the songs running over them. This week, it started with a picture of light streaming through the open canopy of a forest, a place where God exists to me. I was feeling it, not thinking it. A woman onstage was talking about her decision on a particular song we were to sing, talking about how her life was so full of all these distractions, and finally, when she came to ask God to reveal to her what music she should chose, and sought his counsel on the other issues, the answer was that He had been waiting for her this whole time, just waiting for her to start leaning on him already. And with this revelation, she chose Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) , a modern twist on an old hymn. I always loved this song, but this day, I was being moved by the words.
Clips from a movie about the Last Supper rolled across the twin screens as this week's Scripture was played from a recording that reverberated throughout the sanctuary. The minister began his sermon, a time that is usually the most challenging with the children, mostly the youngest one. Today, it was the usual struggle again, the constant whispering between us, his requests for toys or potty breaks, my admonishments, attempts to engage him in coloring, the questioning myself on if other well-intended people are right, if he is too young for this and I should just make sure he is in the nursery during this, or in the little church choir upstairs, but always the guilt of pushing him into something away from me when all week I spent away from him at work, the desire to show him how I live my faith, how I want it to be for him, the expectations I have versus the reality of taking a three year old to church services that he can't understand. The difference this time, though, was how I felt about it. My heart was so much lighter than it has been in the past, dealing with this same problem, and I say a silent prayer to God, thanking him for bringing that light back into my life, for chasing the darkness away.
I am only catching snatches of the sermon, which is exasperating me, because I really want to absorb it today, and some of what Brian is saying is speaking to me. In fact, he is kind of talking about some of what I've been thinking about, about the struggle, and how we are to deal with it, questioning if we allowed ourselves to be defined by the struggle, or transcend it. "Some of us here are dealing with pain, dealing with past abusive relationships, dealing with dark times, and what God wants is for us to not be defined by that, but defined by this instead", and he gestures to the breaking of bread and the spilling of wine, of the sacrifice of the Lamb. He is talking about Passover, and the marking of the doors with sheep's blood, and the gift of people's presence in our lives, and my mind is rolling.
Then we break for communion, and all these thoughts spill out when I dip the bread into the wine, and take my place on my knees to pray after. I lift my heart up to God, and I am thanking him for the light he has placed in my life, for leading me out of the desert, for transforming my heart the past months, for all the gifts He has brought to me, for His presence most of all. I am weeping with gratitude for this God, who saved/ a wretch like me.
And wretch I was, so darn miserable and aching inside before. I think about that today, think about how on other Sundays just like this, I would go home from church crying, and spend the day trying to lift myself out of this depression. Some of that darkness was from the struggle of trying to manage these two heathen children on my own, but my attitude is different now. I used to wish someone was there to help me, to reach out for someone to lean on, but I've gotten past that, on to the realization that I have to do it myself. Sometimes I feel like no one's really there for me, but all that begats self reliance. I have to do it on my own, because it's not fair to ask anyone else to help carry this load, and that's part of my transformation. Sometimes getting what you need is to stop needing it, and learn how to do without. That's what we've been doing, with the eventual goal of being more complete without, to be more complete for.
Anyway, this day I walk outside of the service with these thoughts, and also the other thought that today was different, because the main thing that keeps me coming back to this place is the connections I have to it - my friends - but today I saw none of those connections. Right as I was thinking that, though, I saw one, and he is just who I wanted to see, after all.
Of all the people I have met through this church, Rich is the one I value the most. His name seems to suit him, in spiritual terms. In fact, he's the one who got me to start coming here in the first place, and after I got to know him, I saw why. Rich is a "fisher of men", a sheperd drawing in the lost sheep. He fired me up with the same enthusiasm, and we used to feed off each other, watching the flock from the back pew, seeing who was new, then almost pushing each other to go round them up, inroduce ourselves, invite them to our small group, which eventually got so big it splintered into many other small groups. Now, Rich and I aren't in the same small group anymore, and so we pass each other in the halls, and even in his house, since my kids are there every Thursday night, but we rarely have a chance to sit down and talk.
Today, as luck would have it, the person sitting by him had just left, and I claimed the spot. He was all worn out from giving blood, and as we sat, people kept stopping to talk to him, to thank him for giving his blood, as if he was part of Christ himself. I joked with him about the state of his heart, had it been drained dry, but knowing Rich, it never would be. As I joked, he caught my eye, noting the tears. Nothing much passes by Rich, and I knew I didn't have to tell him anything, but I wanted to. I told him some of what has been in my heart lately, about the transformation of spirit, of God's presence working in my life, about my struggles.
"It sounds like you've been beating yourself up pretty good, " he said, when I lamented about God "smoting my eye", about my failure to get myself out of a bad situation, about how it was finally time to see the signs in front of me. "I'm going to tell you something...for later. This might not help you right now, but I want you to think about it." He told me about the ghosts of exgirlfriends past, and how even though some of those experiences were bad and painful, in the end, he didn't regret any of it, because it got him to where he was today. He gestured to my kids, the older one who was practicing Tae Kwon Do poses in the hallway, the younger one who flashed us a brilliant smile. "And you got these two out of it, which is something you will never regret."
We talked some more. I told him I felt like everyone was judging me for these struggles I had with the youngest, how I felt eyes on me all the time. "If anyone IS watching you," he said, "It's with sympathy, not judgement. They probably remember what it is like to have small children, and have sympathy, or perhaps are thanking God they aren't there anymore." He gave me some real practical advice on my struggles with the heathens in church, a solution no one had ever suggested, but made perfect sense. "Man, I have missed you," he said. "You always had something deep to say, some intelligent remark, some profound statement to make. I'm sad that we aren't in the same group anymore."
Today, though, I thought it was him that was the profound one, the one who cut down to the heart of the pressing questions, and gave me the gift of clarity, and made me feel like the woe and strife of my past life did have a purpose, something I kind of knew but I guess needed to hear again. His idea for next Sunday, too, gave me hope.
Sometimes things do turn around. Maybe God was just waiting for me to be ready, for me to come and lean on him a little, and all those things I wanted, he just laid them at my feet, like a reward for the well-intended.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought,
So the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing.

WASHERS

Yesterday morning on the Rob Ryan show, they were talking about the game of washers. Rob Ryan was saying he thinks that game was invented in Texas, and there is some kind of washer tournament coming up that he was trying to put together a team for.

I've never played washers, but I know what he is talking about. My memory took me back along the path of association to the dusty little town of Alpine, Texas, where pronghorn antelope graze on the hills surrounding the campus of Sul Ross State University, where my boyfriend of years ago was a student. It was evening, almost twilight, and we were standing on a hill in this backyard of a friend of his. My boyfriend was slowly and carefully tossing the little silver washers, about the size of a quarter, at a target at the other end of the yard. He was explaining to me how the game worked, and how he and his friends would come out here and play, and then I saw it, the dark cloud that passed over his face as he struggled to get a grip on his emotions.

This thing has happened and it cannot be undone.

The day before this, I had come home from college to spend my birthday weekend with my mom. She and I had gone out for barbeque, and we were just laying out the fixings for sandwiches when the phone rang. It was my boyfriend's father, and I could tell from the tone of his voice that something was wrong.

"There's been an accident," he said. My heart lept into my throat. "Noah's okay, but he's in the hospital." Then there was a pause. And? But? What? Then I thought of the giddy phone conversation the night before, how one of our high school friends had come to Alpine to visit Noah, how they were so excited about their plans to drive to Mexico the next day, this day...

"How's Brandon?" I asked.

"Brandon died."

I dropped the phone and walked off a few steps, hand over my mouth. My mother, hearing the clickety clack of the reciever on the ground, looked up. "What's going on?", she asked, as she came over to me. I couldn't talk, though, and just gestured to the phone. She got on the phone and there was a lot of "yes, yes, of course", and then she tells me to grab my things, that Noah's parents are coming to get me and we are driving to Alpine now.

We drove all night, the four of us packed in that little car under the stars. His mom and brother slept in the backseat while his dad and I tried to stay awake. I am sure I was driving them crazy singing along to the Indigo Girls, and finally when I hit a skunk in the wee hours of the morning and not only stunk up the car but got guts on the tires, they had it with me driving. We ran low on gas as the sun was coming up and waited in Fort Stockton at the only gas station along the highway for two hours before the man came to open the place. He wasn't surprised to see us at all, so I am sure he was used to customers doing that same thing (it is a desolate piece of highway).

We got to the hospital in Alpine mid-morning. As we walked in, I knew, I could tell, this experience changed him forever. His journal lay on a table in the hallway when we first walked in, and I flipped through the last few pages, and what he wrote in there brought agony to my heart. He was in the bed, bare-chested, but still wearing the torn and bloody jeans from the wreckage. I wasn't sure what to say to him, so I just curled up on the bed next to him, laying my ear in the hollow of his chest where it had always fit so perfectly. We used to lie in each other's arms like that all the time, and I would listen to his heart beat inside his chest and it felt like an extension of my self. This time, I was expecting it to sound different somehow, like the change he had gone through in his soul would be evident in his body. It sounded like the same old heart, and somehow that comforted me, made me think he was still there.

That day, he kept trying to bring the framework of his former life over his life now. He showed me his dorm room. This was only one month into our freshman year and we had been burning up the phone lines staying in touch, but we hadn't really gotten to show each other our new lives. He introduced me to his friends. We ate lunch in the campus cafeteria.

On the way out of the cafeteria, we ran into a woman who had been the first one on the scene of the accident. She happened to be an EMT as well, so that was helpful, only there was nothing she could do. While Noah turned away to talk to someone, she asked me how he was doing. She told me about driving up to the wreck, of seeing Noah running into the road in those same torn and bloody jeans to flag her down. He was asking her with desperation in his voice to please come help his friend. She had gone over to Brandon, but knew immediately it was too late. He had suffered a traumatic brain injury and had died on impact. The others who had been in the car with them had all suffered catastrophic injuries as well, and were life-flighted to the nearest major hospital. The details she gave are seared into my memory and created a visual picture for me of those desperate moments.

Later that afternoon, we are driving to his friend's house whose backyard we were playing washers in. We were still trying not to talk about it, try not to dwell on this recent tragedy, and we were singing along with the radio when "Spirit in the Sky" came on. I still can't really listen to that song without that connection, and tears welling up in my eyes.

So we are out there in the yard, and Noah is throwing the washers, and stops, realizing that this life he is showing me is now a past. There is now Before the Accident and After the Accident, and this moment is somewhere in between, the transition. I see the anguish in his face and it kills me inside.

"What can I do for you?" I ask him. "How can I help you?"

At first he gives me a one word answer, and it doesn't make sense.

"Time" he says.

"You just have to give me some time to get over this."

Of course. We were young and time went on forever. I could give him that. During the darker moments, later on, when he was self-medicating and pushing me away, I wondered. How much time is enough? I really wanted to know. I wanted someone to tell me. How much is enough? He went to counseling, took medications, but still he struggled, and we struggled. He was like Humpty Dumpty, and I was not all the Kings horses and all the Kings men. I was just a girl.

I was just a girl who was going to school many many miles away from him, and who was meeting new people and experiencing new things. I was a girl in a new life that became my life that he had little part in. Four years went by while we saw each other less and less, while the phone calls petered off, while we grew apart in our seperate cities with our seperate friends. No matter how much I had loved him, it was not enough to conquer time, time spent apart, time spent healing. Time was not on our side.

A few years ago, Noah and I were talking about that time, and he answered the question that no one knew the answer to until after it was over - how much was enough time? Turns out it was about eight years, he said. That's how much time he felt it took before he started putting his life back together again and moving forward.

Now it's been almost fourteen years since The Accident, and Noah is back in Alpine. I hope he is throwing his washers now and not trying not to think about it. I am sure he has other things to think about now. But I think about it, I think about us, and how we were like one of those perfect throws that falls in the dust just short of the target, and everyone says "ooo, that was so close." And we were. Before that time. A part of me will always love him, and he will always be dear in my heart, and my memories of him make me smile, like the song we once said was ours.

Think of me, think of me fondly

When we've said goodbye

Imagine me, once in a while

Please promise that you'll try