Not such a golden moment

Something happened this weekend. Who am I kidding? A lot happened this weekend, especially on Sunday and especially in Vancouver. Hockey gold! It was a day to remember! Unfortunately for me living on the other side of the other country it was also a day to remember but for much different reasons. . Unfortunately I missed the game. Being the good Canadian that I am I skipped hockey to go on a peacekeeping mission. As sure as i was that Canada would win gold that night, I was equally sure that I would step out of a meeting victorious. Reconciled. Restored. It wasn't that I wanted to win and I wanted the other side to loose, I thought for sure we'd all win. I thought we'd talk, we'd hug, we'd move on.
　
Well it's a good thing Canada won or the night would have been a total waste. I took a risk. Those who love me warned me that it could go horribly wrong, that it could do more harm than good. They were right, I left more wounded than when I arrived. I left the meeting in darkness and despair with the chorus of Brad Paisley's "What if she's an angel?" running through my head.

What if she's an angel sent here from heaven
And she's making certain that you're doing your best
To take the time to help one another
Brother are you going to pass that test
You can go on with your day to day
Trying to forget what you saw in her face
Knowing deep down it could have been her saving grace
What if she's an angel

Do I think I'm an angel? GOOD GRIEF NO!!!!!!!!!!!!! Do I think that God used me Sunday night (and the 7 months before it) to show a certain group of people where they need to learn compassion? Absolutely.

It got me thinking about the angels in my life that have been brought to show me my weaknesses. Jesus said "whatever you do for the least of these you do for me." How have I responded to the least of these? Have they come to test compassion and love? Are they God with skin on? Waiting to see how I'll react and fill their needs? It's the other side of what we normally think of the people who help us being angels or Jesus with skin on........ I'm afraid if that's the case then I've failed a lot of tests. Good thing God has compassion on me....

One of the best pieces of advice I've ever been given is not to waste pain. There's a German saying about paying the teachers toll. The teachers toll is the pain or experience involved in learning a lesson. I sure hope that the size of the lesson is supposed to be relative to the toll paid because I paid a lot. Last night in a hospice training session we talked about not asking "why me?" But instead, "if it has to be me what can I learn?" So what have I learned from the past 7 months of pain? Too much to write about. One of the things is learning from others mistakes. I was just going to quote a line in the following poem but it's just waaaaaaaay too good not to share the whole thing:

The Women On My Journey
Rev. Melissa M. Bowers
To the women on my journey
Who showed me the ways to go and ways not to go,
Whose strength and compassion held up a torch of light
and beckoned me to follow,
Whose weakness and ignorance darkened the path and encouraged me
to turn another way.
To the women on my journey
Who showed me how to love and how not to live,
Whose grace, success and gratitude lifted me into the fullness
of surrender to God,
Whose bitterness, envy and wasted gifts warned me away
from the emptiness of self-will
To the women on my journey
Who showed me what I am and what I am not,
Whose love, encouragement and confidence held me tenderly
and nudged me gently,
Whose judgement, disappointment and lack of faith called me
to deeper levels of commitment and resolve.
To the women on my journey who taught me love
by means of both darkness and light.
To these women I say bless you and thank you from the
depths of my heart,for I have been healed and set free
through your joy and through your sacrifice.
　
I know never to say never. My friends and I joke that we did our best parenting BEFORE we became parents. It sounds harsh to say that I would never treat anybody the way I was treated. So let me put it in the form of a prayer.

Dear God, let me recognize the angels you send into my life. And to treat them as if they were in fact you. To understand that hurting people hurt people and that you came for them. Help me to see past the anger to the pain and know that you're big enough to handle it. Only the hands strong enough to be nailed to the cross are strong enough to handle the weight of the world. You are not scared or threatened by anger; you don't see it or the pain that causes it as sin. You came for the sick not the healthy, the sinner not the saved. You, and me as your servant came to meet people where they're at, in all the mud and the muck that isn't of their own making even if I think it is. Besides, you'll help them clean up and you'll love them until they are. Help me to remember that Jesus had friends in messy low places, and if I want to be more like him I'd better start relating more to those low places than to clean high churches. A ship is safe in the harbour but that's not what ships are for. As a former missionary I always took the command to go into the world to mean to go overseas. Today I understand that the world may be waiting for me at the home of a divorced friend.

God help me to do more sacred listening than compulsive fixing. There's healing in listening. In all situations you would be there listening, understanding, knowing. True pull up a chair and turn off your cell phone listening. There's healing in crying with someone. Nobody should cry alone, emotions are a gift from you and they are not to be feared or shamed away. Help me to preach the gospel at all times but use words when necessary. Sometimes people need a slice of pizza more than they need a quote from proverbs. God let the gospel I preach be that of unconditional love. Help me to remember that you love the sinner but hate the sin and that it's not always my job to point our the sin but it is always, always my job to love. Help me to remember the words of 1 Corinthians 13 that tell us what love is and not remember what love is not. Forgive me Lord of all the things that I have done in what I called love.

More later. For now I'm off to reconcile with some angels.

Dirt: old and new....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6hz_s2XIAU

Cool video eh? Today's lesson is about gardening; about being re-planted at the end of January.

It would seem that we are being very silently asked to leave a certain institution. No one will have the guts to say it but where we stand is obvious; especially since that's on the outside looking in. I'm trying to grasp that we were at that institution for a season and now it's time to move on. Ecclesiastes speaks of there being a time for everything and a season for every activity. Apparently it IS our time to uproot. Apparently is IS our time to tear down. Apparently it IS our time to throw away. "Apparently" is being used sarcastically here because despite all the indicators to the contrary I'm really not sure that it IS our time to move on. Or maybe I feel (ok, who am I kidding I KNOW) that moving on isn't God's will. So that brings me to my time to mourn. I've read an article that says that mourning in a situation like this IS the appropriate response. That's good because in case you haven't noticed, I've been known to respond INappropriately....

Soooooooooooooo? Apparently we move on. Matthew 10:13-15 says:

13If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. 14If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. 15I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.

The same story is told in the gospels of Mark and Luke. My favorite part is the word "town" since in our case said institution is an a town about an hour away.

Not the first time we've been in a religious institution for a relatively short time. We were moved on from the last one about a year and a half ago. Such moving makes us look (and honestly feel sometimes transient.) Interesting to note that we've also moved houses some crazy thing like 7 times in 6 years. It's not that we intend to move on; we usually start at a place with the best intentions of putting down roots. In fact that's what I crave. Growing up I lived in the same house in the same community for ???? years? So did my parents friends. When one of them left the property they had lived on for years even I cried. And I cannot begin to imagine what I will do when a cherished aunt and uncle ever leave their house. For so many reasons I've wanted the stability one house, one job, one church would provide to myself and my children. This gypsy lifestyle kind of catches me off guard.

Yet for some reason we do move. Better job opportunity, lack of a job, better house opportunity. Harmful words. All legitimate reasons.

Reasons to make songs like the theme song for the "Littlest Hobo" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=banXT6azA-4 or this one from the Rankin family: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvpZPb11uEU or Willie Nelson's cliched "On the road again" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TD_pSeNelU our theme songs.

Like I said I"m trying reaaaaaaaaaaaaal hard not to see this latest move as rejection or failure. Trying to focus on the idea that rejection may be God's version of re-direction. (Honestly God I didn't know that I needed to be re-directed.) But I do know that "Human beings, like plants, grow in the soil of acceptance, not in the atmosphere of rejection." (John Powell.)

I'm making the choice to see the events of the last 6 weeks as a catalyst. You know, I don't think I've ever used that word before. Actually I'd never have used it at all if I hadn't watched a re-run of Touched by an Angel the other day. (Do you remember that I told you that my Huggyband doesn't do sports? Well he DOES do "Touched by an Angel" repeats every night. Go figure. Anyways.......... according to dictionary.com a "catalyst" is: a person or thing that precipitates an event or change." As in "His imprisonment by the government served as the catalyst that helped transform social unrest into revolution. " Or as in: "being let go from a certain institution was the CATALYST that...................? (Lead to bigger and better things? Honestly I have no idea at this point. I can just hope that it leads to better soil.)

So I guess today was all about dirt. About shaking off the dust and being re-planted in to new soil. And I thought the end of January was the wrong season for gardening.