One of Those Days

Do you ever have those days when you have so much to be thankful for and yet you feel a tiny edge of melancholy or anxiety to those very things? I’m having one of those days. Here are a couple of reasons why.

I am so proud of my kids – all three of them. In less than two months the youngest will turn 18, making me the mother of three adults. 18 is an exciting time for my two younger ones as they both are embarking on brand new adventures.

And yet. . . I am very fond of another 18 year old who left home today. She had been given six months to find a place to go now that she has graduated from high school and is officially an adult. I guess those milestones were the cutoff for parenting responsibilities in that family. I am very concerned about her choice of places to go and my heart is breaking. I know that 18 year olds are “officially” adults, but that sure doesn’t mean they are ready to face the world on their own yet.

Sometimes in hospice work, you have the opportunity to work with a family for a longer period of time than you would normally expect. I began working with one family a little over two years ago when both of the parents came under our care. Our whole team fell in love with them and they have become like family. I can walk into their home any time, whether the visit has been scheduled in advance or not. They ask about my children by name. They remind me so much of my grandparents who died in the mid-1990s. I love it when I actually have the time and the opportunity to build real relationships like these. In this line of ministry, you are rarely afforded that kind of time.

And yet. . . it breaks my heart every time. They celebrated 70 years of marriage a couple of months ago. Their love for each other was so visible and so true, even (or maybe especially) after so many years. Then last month, the husband died. On my first visit to the wife following his death, I just sat on the couch beside her and held her hand for awhile. There was nothing that could be said to fix that kind of hurt. On the following visit, I was amazed at how well she seemed to be doing – talking, smiling, telling stories, asking me to bring pictures of my great-great-aunt, Aunt Pearl, who happened to have been her teacher in school. Then last week when I saw her, all I could get out of her was one smile. That was it. The rest of the time she kept her eyes closed. She is now in the hospice house. When I first saw her today, I wasn’t sure she recognized me. It wasn’t until I’d been by her bed a few minutes and she grabbed my hand and said, “I love you!” that I knew she did. It took a lot of effort for her to talk to me today. At one point, I started to excuse myself because she seemed very tired. When her eyes grew anxious, I asked if she wanted me to stay awhile longer. “Please.” I pulled up a chair by her bed, held her hand, and watched an episode of Reba with her. It wasn’t her usual programming. They always watched Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Perry Mason, and The Waltons at home. She seemed satisfied with Reba today. When the episode went off, I asked her if she was ready to nap. She said yes. I told her I would be back to see her soon. She thanked me for “always being so sweet” to her. I know that what she wants more than anything is to close her eyes and join her husband. She isn’t afraid. She isn’t depressed. She is just that ready. It is heartbreakingly beautiful.

Life is so complex and so full of messy emotions. Sometimes I wish, as the sundial in the photo says, to count only the sunny hours. Of course, that is impossible. There are days that are overcast. Storms roll through. Night falls without fail. If I counted only the sunny hours, I sure would be missing out on a lot of time! Any time I find myself wishing I could just tune out the sad feelings, I remember something that my former hairdresser once told me. (She may have been a hairdresser, but she was actually a wonderful counselor. Today, she is a minister.) She said that love is like a two-edged sword. The more deeply you are able and willing to love, the more deeply you will feel the pain of loss and grief. You cannot have one without the other. I know I don’t want to miss out on the love, so I guess I will have to accept and weather the accompanying pain.

It’s just that there are some days when it’s much harder to do than others.

Where Friends Meet

Life as a traveling chaplain is never dull. I am always learning something new and seeing new places. Today as I visited one family who lives out in a small rural town, the son showed me a picture of an old local church and told me a story about how many members there died crossing the Savannah River to attend Easter services back in the early 1900’s. The ferry they were using to cross the flooding river capsized. Only one person survived. Such a tragic story.

I asked if the building still stands. It does. It was only about 10 minutes away from their house. I love churches, especially old ones, so when I left I typed the church name into my phone and followed its directions to the location. It was several miles out a narrow country road. I didn’t pass another car the entire stretch. To see the church, you turn off at their sign and take another very bumpy road with crater-sized potholes a short distance until you get to a clearing. There it stands, windows boarded, surrounded by an old graveyard.

I might have a sense of adventure, but I’m not stupid. The place was remote, so I knew to leave the exploration to another time when I could have someone else with me. I did, however, stop the car just long enough to take a couple of photos.

When I got home after work, I did a little research on the church. I was surprised at what I found:

Ridge Church is an old, abandoned church that was used by Satanists for a short time after it closed. All together, it has four graveyards and a mass gravesite, most likely containing the remains of the many victims of a fire that happened in Lowndesville years ago. People have reported seeing orbs floating over graves in broad daylight and at night, hearing sermons going on inside the church itself, hearing footsteps inside the church coming from above their heads as though someone is walking around in the bell tower, and even seeing dark figures inside the church moving around. Many people refuse to enter the church due to a negative feeling they get upon stepping up the stairs and opening the door, as though something is “wrong” with the building. The inside of the church itself tends to feel freezing cold even during the summer time. (https://hauntedplacesofusa.blogspot.com)

I am happy to report that I encountered no orbs, no dark figures, no sourceless sermons, no feelings of doom, no unseasonal cold. I even checked my photos to see if I accidentally captured anything. Nothing. The only creepy feelings I had were more about being in the middle of nowhere and out of sight of the “main” road, which wasn’t a main road at all. I am more afraid of wayward flesh and blood up to no good than I am of spirits.

Or maybe I’m just used to the spirits. There were reportedly unseen inhabitants of my former church in Charleston. When I first heard about them, I was skeptical in ways that only someone not from around there could be. You see, the vast majority of longtime residents of that area have had unexplained encounters of one kind or another. What do you expect of a city with a history like Charleston’s?

It didn’t take long to make me a believer. There were many days when I worked alone in the church in my upstairs office and listened as it sounded like the entire fellowship hall below me was being rearranged. Doors slammed unexpectedly. Sometimes I would walk down a hall and pass right through a spot of unexplainable frigid air. One day I was in my office, the church secretary was downstairs in her office, and a church member was painting one of the classrooms when there came a terrible crashing sound in the kitchen. The three of us rushed to investigate. One set of upper cabinet doors stood open and a half dozen plates were shattered across the entire room. I remember checking for reports of seismological activity in the area in an effort to explain what had happened, but there had been none.

Yes, it was unnerving at times. After awhile, though, it became the “normal” for my experiences inside the church. We named one of the spirits a woman’s name – a name that kept popping up in autocorrected texts between me, my daughter, and my good friend. When we couldn’t explain why so many different words were autocorrected to that one name, we decided she had joined our conversation and was telling us her name. Is it weird that I feel funny about naming her here? I’m not sure how she would feel about being on social media. (And honestly, I’m not really joking…)

There are so many things in life that we cannot explain. I’ve worked around death for enough years now to know that in some times and in some places, the curtain between what we can see and what is hidden from our sight can sometimes get very thin. I’ve sat with countless patients who were seeing and talking to loved ones who died many years ago. I have no doubt that it is real. I find it comforting. I’ve been in the room with a dying person who was most obviously in conversation with at least two spirit presences. As I watched the patient’s expressions as he turned from one side of the room, to the other, and back again time after time, it became quite clear which of the presences was good and which was evil. I did a whole lot of praying in the room that day.

As strange as it all may seem, I remain much more afraid of living humans with evil intentions than of signs of presences I cannot see with my eyes. I think the reason is that I try my best to walk close to the Spirit, which I know is greater than any other spirit I could encounter. Still, I treat it all with great respect – a mystery that I am not meant to fully understand right now. And just like in that patient’s room, I know there is both good and evil around us. That realization has done wonders for my prayer life.

As for the Ridge Church, I think I would like to go back sometime to read the names on some of those gravestones and learn about that old church’s history. I won’t be going to chase ghosts, as a couple of websites might encourage me to do. At most, I just might meet some old friends.

Where Friends Meet

Connections

I am a PK – preacher’s kid, for those who may not know the lingo. Sort of. My father was a full time Baptist pastor for the first five years of my life. He served four churches in his full time church ministry days – one in Indiana before I was born, two in North Carolina which is where I was born, and one in New York. When I was five, he accepted an administrative position at Anderson College in Anderson, South Carolina. From that point on, he served many congregations in the area as interim pastor. He and my mother decided that it was best that my siblings and I have one church home to grow up in as opposed to traveling with him from church to church. So while my dad was still a preacher, I did not experience the “typical” preacher’s kid life.

In recent years, I realized that despite the fact that I was really too young to remember much of the PK life, a number of the themes/experiences of my own ministry have been parallel to many of his. I can’t explain the synchronicity, but I find it fascinating. I have become very interested in how my family’s church experiences have shaped my relationship to the Church, even though most of those experiences occurred before I was old enough to comprehend them and many of the stories were never even shared with me until I was an adult.

I talked to my dad about this recently and told him that I was toying with the idea of writing about these various connections between our respective ministries. I asked if he would mind writing down some of those stories from his ministry and talking about them with me. Of course, he agreed.

Oh, what a joy this has been! He and my mother have been talking about their experiences, brainstorming stories to share. Most days I get an email with a new story. He says it is hard to keep it to one, but thinks it best. These emails are priceless treasures. I don’t know yet exactly what I will do with his stories or with my own, but I am so happy that we have this conversation going.

Turn, turn, turn…

I spent some time with an old friend today. Well, I guess we were more acquaintances than friends. He was ahead of me in school by two years and was in my church youth group. We shared a number of experiences back in the day: Bible studies, many and varied youth activities, countless choir rehearsals, some beach trips, and a few choir tours. We weren’t close, but we occupied the same orbit in our younger years. Then he graduated, went away to college, and moved on with his life. A couple of years later I did the same. I honestly don’t know if we’ve seen each other since.

I had the occasion to talk with him by phone over the past few months in my official capacity as a hospice chaplain. He lives in a neighboring state, but was always quick to answer calls and was always so gracious and grateful for our help in this new role in his family’s life. He was in town on business today and stopped by the hospice house to pick up some papers he needed. We had a wonderful catch-up visit while he was there.

It’s strange seeing people from my youth that I haven’t seen in a long time. In my mind we are all frozen in time, looking the way we did when we were young and relatively carefree. We tried to figure out how long it has been since we’d seen each other. It has been 40 years since he graduated from high school and left for college. Gulp.

Our parents are elderly. Our children are grown, or in the case of my youngest two, almost grown. I am a grandmother. His brother has been back in the States for several years now after serving as a missionary overseas for 25 years. (Wait – that can’t be right. In my mind he’s been frozen in time at the age of 25.) His sister, the one closest in age to my sister, will be turning 65 this year. That means Joy would have been, let’s see….62 this September.

In so many ways, my youth feels like it was just a year or two back. I remember sitting in worship in our church surrounded by the people who invested so much in me and the other youth – our parents, our church staff, our Sunday school teachers, our youth trip chaperones. Those our parents’ age I considered “borderline old.” Anyone older than they were fell into the “really old” category. That means that according to my youthful calculations, I am currently straddling the fence between borderline old and really old.

A classmate of mine died in the hospice house this week. I’ve worked in hospice long enough to know better than to say he was too young. We’ve had many younger than him come through our services. Nonetheless, it’s sobering. Another classmate of ours was exiting his room last week as I was preparing to go in. I would never have known him if he hadn’t given me his name. He looked, well…old. I was telling my oldest daughter about it this morning and she laughed. I took her laughter to mean that I’m no spring chick myself. Point taken. Still, to salvage my pride, I did a little Facebook snooping, took a screenshot of his photo, and sent it to her with no explanation, just the question: “How old is this man?” I felt vindicated when her guess was a good 10 years older than me. I guess it’s possible that she was just humoring me. Still, I love that kid!

When I turned 50, a few folks in my life wanted to tease me with black balloons and all the over the hill jokes, as people so frequently do at all the “big” birthdays. I think it surprised a number of them that it all rolled right off of me. I was thrilled to turn 50! I’m afraid I may have stolen the fun from a few of them when I responded with an understanding I learned the hard way. Age is just a number and every year is a gift. My sister died at 49. She would have loved nothing more than to see 50 – and beyond.

I still believe that. I do my best to embrace every new number I am gifted with each year. I am feeling pretty good about my age. If I ever start to forget the part about every year being a gift, I am quickly reminded when I look at my patient census every day. My hair is changing color. My body is changing in a multitude of ways. (Is it hot in here?) My youngest child will be leaving for college 78 days. (Not that I am counting.) My second grandchild should be arriving in about 84 days. (I am definitely counting.) I am excited to see what is coming next for my children, for my grandchildren, and for me.

I laugh at my oldest daughter whenever she says something that makes her sound old. Just the other day, she asked me, “What’s up with all these teenagers wearing shirts that are way longer than their shorts? Do they mean to make it look like they aren’t wearing anything underneath?” I laughed and I laughed and I laughed. She’s a long way from the “borderline old” category, but she’s firmly in the “I’m too old for that nonsense” category, and I’m loving it. Before she knows it, she’ll be catching up with an old high school friend that she hasn’t seen in 40 years…

Time flies.

You’ll Find Me in Stars Hollow

1. I love my work as a hospice chaplain, but sometimes it is so hard. For whatever reason, the hard cases all seem to come at the same time. There are two particularly difficult ones right now – one patient I’ve known since I was a teen, and one I’ve been visiting for about 3 years now who died this afternoon, leaving behind a grieving wife of 70 years who is also my patient. There’s a third case as well – one for which I have no words. It’s been a hard day.
2. When I went to seminary, I was never really taught how to handle relationship troubles with people the same age as my parents. I have a heartbroken octagenarian in my congregation. I’m a pastor, not a counselor, so basically I listen and I pray. Still, it feels…uncomfortable somehow.
3. My baby graduates from high school one week from today. I’m feeling all the feels lately. I am also completely at a loss for the perfect graduation gift and I’m running out of time. Suggestions welcomed!
4. I’ve been dealing with a sore knee for several weeks now. I’ve been trying to balance the recovery with some activity. I think there was too much on the activity side today because it’s awfully sore again tonight. Patience is not my strongest virtue.
5. When I’m feeling a little overwhelmed, the best thing I know to do is to return to Stars Hollow to hang out with some dear old friends. After binge-watching a few episodes, I’m feeling a little better already.

Friday night dinner makes my life seem a lot easier!

Seeds, Feathers, and Words

Words are seeds that do more than blow around. They land in our hearts and not the ground. Be careful what you plant and careful what you say. You might have to eat what you planted one day.

Unknown

I read about a children’s sermon once in which the pastor used two bowls, two tubes of toothpaste, and two young volunteers to make a point. The pastor offered a prize, a piece of candy, to the child who could empty the tube of toothpaste into the bowl the fastest. After some frantic, messy squeezing, the competition was declared a tie and both children won a prize. “Now,” the pastor said, “here’s the real competition. I’ll give $20 to the one who can get all the toothpaste back into the tube the fastest.” It didn’t take long before both contestants protested that the task was impossible. “You can’t put it back in once you’ve squeezed it all out!” That, of course, was the whole point of the children’s sermon. The toothpaste was compared to words we’ve said in anger, meanness, jealousy, or gossip – words that once spoken could never be unspoken. All the kids were given a piece of candy and sent back to their pews.

Not bad, I guess, as far as children’s sermons go. I’ve also heard a sermon illustration that is very similar that talks about tearing a hole in a feather pillow and scattering the feathers. That story always cracks me up because it brings back memories of one Christmas when extended family gathered at my grandparents’ house. All of us kids went upstairs to hang out, cut up, and basically stay out the adults’ hair. A couple of the older cousins got into a pillow fight that exploded. Literally. One of the pillows they were using was a feather pillow that burst, spewing feathers everywhere. Certain that we would all be in big trouble, we frantically stuffed the feathers, or at least as many as we could gather, back into the pillow before filing quietly downstairs. We all sat down, six innocent angels. The adults all got quiet and stared at us. My uncle spoke first, asking us what we’d been doing. We claimed that we had just been talking and playing games. “No pillow fights?” We looked at each other wide-eyed, wondering if it’s true that adults have eyes in the backs of their heads. Then my uncle stood up, walked across the room, and started plucking feathers from our hair, feathers we had somehow overlooked in our scramble to re-stuff the pillow.

For better or for worse our words, whether said aloud or written and released into the world, cannot be erased or taken back. Even when we think we’ve pulled off adequate damage control, our words can still come back to haunt us. I believe this is what is at the root of writers block for many of us. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot this week.

Here’s why. During the pandemic shut down, our small church (like all churches who took the danger of the virus seriously) had to pivot. I began videotaping my sermons, something I’ve been loathe to do for the entirety of my ministry. The only thing I hate more than hearing a recording of my own voice is being able to see myself at the same time. If you mess up in a worship service, sure people will remember it. But all they have is the memory. If you mess up on video, well…. Necessity forced me to overcome this phobia and for months I went to the church each week, video recorded myself, played it back to make sure I didn’t say/do anything too embarrassing, and then watched it again with my congregation as we gathered on Zoom on Sunday mornings. The video itself was later posted in a private Facebook group and to our website. We have several in our church who do not have computers or internet access, so a written copy of the sermon was mailed to them each week.

Now that we are worshipping in person again, we are still continuing with these pandemic-birthed practices. We video the service each week and we mail out sermons to those who still want them. This causes a bit of anxiety for me because now I am longer am I in control of the video. What happens, happens. I just pray each week that there won’t be too many bloopers. I wasn’t as worried about the sermon copies because only a handful of people are still getting those.

Or so I thought. I found out something interesting this week. One person who received my sermons by mail had been reading them and then passing them on to a neighbor. That neighbor read them and passed them on to an 80 year old man who “studied them” and then passed them on to his sister. What happened to them once the sister was finished, I do not know. What I do know is that words I have written have been shared more widely than I anticipated.

This is all good stuff. It’s time for churches, even small rural ones, to step up to try new ways of sharing the Word. It’s wonderful that church members are sharing with neighbors, and neighbors are sharing with friends, and those friends are sharing with family. That’s the way it should be.

Yet back to the writers block thing. I am comfortable preaching to “my” church and sharing sermons with them. I know them. They know me. I picture their faces and remember their stories when I write my sermons. I know about how much I can push and when I need to proceed with gentleness. As for those who watch online and those who receive paper sermons second-, third- hand, I don’t know them. I can’t pretend to anticipate how they hear and receive the words I write and preach. And it makes me nervous.

This is another reason I have returned to the practice of blogging after several years away. There’s really no difference in hitting the “Publish” button on a blog, pressing record on a camera, and putting a stamp on a sermon before dropping it in the mail. Once the words are out there, I no longer have control over them.

Once upon a time, I wrote regularly, daily sometimes, about all manner of things not knowing if it would be read, or by whom. I didn’t spend much time worrying about whether anyone would like it. I figured if they didn’t, they would just move on. It was more important to me back then to practice using my voice than it was to having my words liked or approved.

I don’t think I will ever be able to go back to those idyllic early blogging days again. The world has changed. People are quicker to criticize or even attack. Those were the kinds of things that precipitated my exit from blogging for so long. But now I am back. I’m back because my intent is to put good words, good seeds, out there. Sometimes words don’t need to be stuffed back into a pillowcase. Sometimes they need to be scattered, hopefully accomplishing good.

So here I am, trying to learn to balance out my voice and my fear. I don’t like a spotlight and have never sought one out, but it’s awfully hard to plant seeds in the dark. Maybe, just maybe, a few of those seeds will make a difference, somewhere, for the the better.

“Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed.” -Abraham Joshua Herschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Samskara

First posted on July 1, 2013, under the title, “Reading with My Pen: Releasing the Story.” I went through my archives today looking for this one. I’m hopefully on the healing side of two recurring ailments: IT band syndrome and strained larynx. There are physical, easy to point to reasons for each. Yet something reminded me today that sometimes we need to dig a little deeper with our ailments to see if there also may be something else going on at the emotional, soul level. I don’t have my answer to that yet, but reading again what I wrote at a time that I was first learning and exploring this concept is a good beginning.

I do my best reading with a pen in hand. When I stumble across beautiful sentences, or wise quotes, or unforgettable scenes, I feel like I need to put down a flag of discovery so that one day (hopefully) I can return. Sometimes I underlines phrases, sentences, or entire paragraphs. Sometimes I draw smiley faces or exclamation marks in the margin. Sometimes I initiate my own conversation with the text by writing in questions or comments. (I am so thankful that Amazon built these capabilities into their Kindle!) Sometimes I move the entire conversation – quotes and all – into my journal so I will have room to explore. Too often, however, my marks just sit on the page – forgotten until or unless I pick the book back up again at some point in the future. I thought it might be fun to go searching for the flags I’ve planted around words in some of my favorite books.

This first quote comes from Devotion, by Dani Shapiro. I ran across the book by chance at Goodwill. A few months earlier I read the sample selection on my Kindle and put the book on my “books to buy when I have the disposable dollars or when Kindle puts them on a great sale” list. Needless to say, I was thrilled by my bargain find.

My copy of Devotion is marked up everywhere. While the specifics of Shapiro’s journey and mine are significantly different at some points, other points had me saying, “Yes! I know exactly what you’re talking about!” Here is one (of a gazillion) marked passages.

Yogis use a beautiful Sanskrit word, samskara, to describe the knots of energy that are locked in the hips, the heart, the jaw, the lungs. Each knot tells a story – a narrative rich with emotional detail. Release a samskara and you release that story. Release your stories, and suddenly there is more room to breathe, to feel, to experience the world. (pp. 16-17)

As for yogis, I know nothing of them. As for yoga, I know only a handful of poses. As for knots of energy in the body, I am an expert. I carry the heavy energy of responsibility (at home and at work) in my neck and across my shoulders, almost as though I am carrying a yoke. I carry the energy of writing in my lower back. Maybe that’s really because I sit too long in unfriendly chairs. Or maybe it’s because words can be heavy sometimes. I carry restless energy in my legs. Anxiety, when it attacks, steals energy from my lungs. The energy of grief and regret sits heavy in my core. The energy that is created when I fail to speak when I know I should takes up residence in my jaw, and I will awake in the morning painfully sore from clenching it through the night. I carry protective energy – whether it is self-protective or a need to protect my family – in my hands, either in a clenched fist or by holding my thumb.

I know. Weird, right?

Once upon a time, I was fortunate enough to live near an amazing friend who is an equally amazing massage therapist. For several years, I kept myself on a regular schedule of massage. Some days I had no idea going into a massage how tight my body was until she began working to loosen the knots. Some days, about halfway through the massage, I found myself feeling emotional – like I was going to cry. I learned to pay attention to these things and to become more mindful of their origins. What stressors, what fears, what hurts was I guilty of shoving inside my body so that they wouldn’t be seen by me or anyone else? All of these things – the bad and the good – create an energy. That energy must reside somewhere, whether I choose to acknowledge it or not.

Each knot tells a story – a narrative rich with emotional detail.

I love stories. I get great joy from telling stories, especially The Story, in my work every week. Rarely a day goes by that I don’t record some part of my day’s story somewhere – in a journal, on my blog, through Twitter or Facebook, or in a file on my computer. On those days when I have a hard time thinking of any story worth 140 characters on Twitter, when I think that nothing has happened worth telling, maybe I should pay more attention to those knots of energy in my body. They are trying hard to tell my story – if I will just let go, if I will just risk being vulnerable, if I will just trust my circle of loved ones to love me no matter what. If I can just let go, risk, and trust, then I’m bound to become unstuck as the stories of life begin to flow freely around me.

Release a samskara and you release that story. Release your stories, and suddenly there is more room to breathe, to feel, to experience the world.

Worth a Zero

Almost two months ago, I set a goal of writing two blog posts a week as a way of waking up my long dormant personal writing chops. I had a perfect record…until last Thursday. I have a bit of a perfectionist streak in me, so all I could see was a big fat zero at the top of my imaginary (and blank) post assignment paper. I hate making bad grades. In fact, when I met up with my first grade teacher many years after I sat in her classroom I asked her if she remembered anything about what I was like as a first grader. She said, “I remember that you hating making mistakes. If you got a paper back that had even a single “X” on it, you would hide it inside your desk as quickly as you could so that no one else would see it.” I guess old habits die hard.

Last Wednesday and Thursday, the days I normally would have been thinking about writing a post, I was instead writing the funeral service for a dear friend from my first church in Landrum. This woman and her family took me and my kids in and made us part of their family. My two youngest spent many happy hours playing at their house so that I could work, attend one of the many games/events of my oldest, or take care of errands that would have been so much harder with two toddlers along for the ride.

I have maintained contact with some of the folks from that first church, but this family is the only one still active in the life of that church that we visited on several occasions. Not that we didn’t want to see anyone else, mind you. I love those precious people. But this family was my family, just not by blood. When I got word that their matriarch had died, I was crushed. On our last visit just a couple of months before the beginning of the pandemic, she asked me if I would do her service when she died. Of course I said I would. Then I added the contingency, “But not any time soon, okay?” This was way too soon.

I worked hard on that service. I wanted it to be everything she deserved. It was also the first time I would step into that pulpit, my very first pulpit, in almost 12 years. I wanted anyone there who knew me back in the earliest days of my ministry to feel good about the time and patience they invested in me as a new pastor. I think it went well. I’m satisfied that I gave it my best. And that’s worth getting that zero last Thursday.

Turns out, you can go home again.

Tell Me a Story

Some nights when I crawl into bed, my body is exhausted but my brain refuses to settle. I think about things I should have accomplished during the day, or things I should have done better, or things I should have (or shouldn’t have) said, or what I need to remember to do tomorrow, or….well, you get the picture. The tired child inside of me gets impatient with all of the adult administrivia and demands, “Tell me a story!”

Sometimes I wake up in the night feeling as if my body is on fire. I fling back the covers, flip my pillow, scoot to a different position where the sheets are cooler. This annoys me, especially if it’s the second or third time that night. I grumble to myself that if men had hot flashes, medical researchers would have long ago received all the funding they needed to remedy them. Gradually I cool off, both body and emotion, and try to go back to sleep. The child in me whispers, “Tell me a story!”

Sometimes, almost always around 3 a.m., I awake in fight or flight mode. Threats, occasionally real but mostly imagined, seem larger than life. I make myself take deep breaths to ground myself in my body. I pray. And the child in me whimpers, “Tell me a story – a happy one, please!”

Sometimes I wake from a dream – an interesting one. It intrigues me and I retell it to myself so that maybe I will still remember it when morning comes. The child in me says, “That was a good story. Tell it again!”

Sometimes I wake and absolutely nothing is wrong. The house is quiet except for Rookie’s snoring at the foot of the bed. Nothing in particular is on my mind to worry about. I smile and snuggle down under the covers to go back to sleep. The child in me says, “Can I have a story first? A short one?”

Nighttime is my best time for stories. I have so many of them! Images from things I’ve seen, heard, read, experienced. Flashes from dreams. None of the stories are finished. Either sleep or the alarm clock steals the time to end them. Sometimes I write them down, but they don’t seem nearly as good as they did the night before. One day, maybe I’ll stick with a story long enough in the daylight to finish it. But for now, I will just pull my inner child closer and whisper, “Once upon a time…”

Time-ish

Flashback Post: Originally posted on September 25, 2012, back when I lived in Charleston and actually ran – on purpose!

Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.  ~ William Faulkner

The clock in our church’s fellowship hall must have had an unfortunate accident sometime over the weekend. As the choir and I gathered there to pray before worship on Sunday morning, I looked around to see how much time we had. This is what I saw:

I laughed. I love this clock now. I declare this clock to be my clock and this time to be my time. What time should I be there? Whenever! It reminds me of the clock I’ve always wanted, but never got around to purchasing:

Time is a troublemaker for me. All my life, I’ve struggled with being late. My dad has always teased me for being born two weeks late, on a Sunday at 10:01. Church started at 10:00. He said I was born late, was late for church, and have been late ever since. 

I know, I know – for you early arrivers, I appear to be inconsiderate and selfish. But really, I’m not. I’m taking advantage of every minute I have, right up to the last minute. If I need to be at church at 10:00 and I know it takes me 25 minutes to get there, I will leave at 9:30. Plenty of time, right? Unfortunately, that target time doesn’t take into account slow traffic, trains, or the “Oh good grief – where did that dog put my shoe” moments which invariably happen. The thing is, right up until 9:30, I’m busy doing what needs to be done: putting dishes in the dishwasher, making a phone call, paying that bill that needs to go out today, etc. Those are all things I can’t do if I leave at 9:10. Then I find myself sitting, twiddling my thumbs, waiting on others, thinking of all I could be doing instead. 

I find time to be an inflexible taskmaster. The older I get, the better I get at planning my time, mainly because I have to in order to get along in a culture that is ruled by The Clock. Still, sometimes the clock makes me crazy.

Yesterday morning was a clear, brisk morning – perfect for a run. I set out on my familiar route, enjoying the cool air. At one point early in the run, I realized that I was enjoying myself so much that I hadn’t checked the clock on my phone in awhile. That never happens! I am usually aware of every agonizing second of a run. About halfway through my route, I realized I was on target for beating my own personal best time. (Don’t be impressed. It’s still very slow.) I picked up the pace a little more. As I made the turn for the home stretch, my sweaty hand slipped and hit the camera button on my phone. For whatever reason, that closed down the Runkeeper app that was tracking my time and distance. So much for knowing if I would beat my personal best. I was so frustrated! By the time I got back to the house, that stupid clock – or my obsession with what it could no longer tell me – had put a damper on what had been an otherwise enjoyable workout. 

Later in the afternoon, my friend Cathy and I decided to stop by a cute garden shop that always catches my eye when I pass it. While the shop itself was closed, the gardens were open. I smiled when I saw this sign on their door:

“Closed Sunday & Monday. Open 10-ish to whenever-ish” 

I like “-ish” time. Kairos time. The “right” time that is recognized by the soul and not by the clock. Do I still have to plan around the clock? Definitely . . . sometimes. But when I can, I want to live by the “whenever, whatever, feels-too-good-to-check-the-clock, –ish” kind of time. Won’t you join me?