I have decided . . .

I went to church today with a tray full of cookies and a heart full of hope. The cookies, my signature recipe of molasses cookies made into sandwich cookies with the butter cream frosting in the middle, are the now expected item I bring to covered dish events, in this case the luncheon after the church service. The open, expectant heart is how I live on my good days.

As a member of the choir I needed to take my tray to the fellowship hall as quickly as I could walk downstairs so I could get to the music room, while having a delightful conversation with a woman I often sit by in choir about the delicious meat we were served at the pig pickin' the night before. Finding my seat in the choir loft I began to adhere my page stickers onto the pages of songs selected for service designated in the bulletin. We would then have a short rehearsal and stop in time for me to make a brief visit to the ladies room and even get a quick drink of juice.

Walking back into the sanctuary as the pews began to fill I noticed a woman lighting a candle, pausing momentarily to remember someone. Though I wanted to do the same without any specific intention in mind, I decided not to intrude on her prayer so I went on to my place.

Sitting in the choir I am surrounded by a musical family. We all sing our parts and though some of us do not always hit the right notes, our hearts are in the right place. We sing in unison; we sing in harmonies. We sing together to lead the rest of the congregation into the worship of God.

At some point in the service as the guest pastor was illustrating the gospel of Mark and telling us to listen to Jesus, I felt this overwhelming presence near me, around me, over me, within me. It was not of my own doing as I try not to draw attention to myself, especially when I am sitting in front of the entire church. I was grateful that the communion table had been lifted up to the higher step to serve as a wall of partition just in case I were to become emotional. It was more than a feeling, however, or even an emotional moment. It was exactly where God knew I would be, waiting for inspiration, hoping for a word from him. It was time for our divine appointment.

And just like that, this rush of words came at me saying, "Why is it so hard for you to trust me?"

After all of these years, I thought this was the sort of thing he was going to finally explain to me and not the other way around!

My mind went into overdrive as I contemplated to what the Creator of the Universe could possibly be referring? But I knew. Before him were laid bare: my thoughts, my concerns, my worries, my issues. Countless sleepless nights have been the norm as of late. Unclear focus has kept me from finding healing through the expression of my thoughts in words.Trapped in a purgatory of unfinished sentences, incomplete ideas and random emotional outbursts, I had not been fully aware of how much could be attributed to physical phenomena, what part has been an emotional burden for me to bear and where the Spirit of God fits in. Waiting, I had hoped the numbness that was eventually creeping in would not come to redefine my spiritual path.  

I have seen the provision of the Lord so many times in so many miraculous ways I have no right to question. But I do. My oldest son is in his final year of college and will graduate debt-free because he was accepted into a program that has provided for his financial need. My middle son is rejoicing as he is being accepted as a musician and a runner at the beginning of his college education, also receiving a generous amount of aid to pay his bills. And my youngest son, who has been on my heart a lot lately, went forward to light his own candle today while my husband sat in the pew, tired yet happy in his new job--a position offered to him on the very day that his current position was suddenly in transition.

With my family in good shape, my mind wandered to the condition of my church family. Can I trust God with them? The guest pastor said, "The way you love your neighbor is the way you love God. The way you love God is the way you love your neighbor." Are we as a congregation loving each other well? How can anyone say he loves God whom he does not see when he does not love his brother who is standing right beside him? I've read this in the Bible long enough to know God is not calling us to do something impossible. He is asking us to love him so he can teach us how to love each other. We can love because of the love he puts in our hearts. We can only come up with so much on our own. The truest, purest love originates from him. It is for us to wait and to pray that he can find room in our hearts to contain the kind of love this world needs. He loves through us, loving us in the process.

Becoming an elder has enlarged my heart and has made me more capable to love. I am not the same person. And yet there it is--my ability to trust--being called into question . . . again. And for good reason.

I always thought it was hard for me to trust because of the disappointments in life. When people who are supposed to be trustworthy are not, trusting is a hard lesson to hold onto. But sitting there in my choir loft chair surrounded by the people of God, I knew without a doubt that whatever happens next has no bearing on whether or not I am to trust God. Trusting God stands alone, apart from me.

But what about how I want certain things to turn out? Decisions going the way I want them to? People rising to a standard I want them at? What about what I want? Oh.

This is not blind faith. It is a well-informed decision to listen to a Messiah who has my best interests in mind. And regardless of whether I have some really great ideas about how to run things, I AM NOT IN CHARGE. To try to take what God has not given--namely his authority--is to run the risk of being on the outside looking in. It is to strive for peace but never achieve any. It is to be constantly considering the possibilities instead of letting go of the outcome. It takes away the peace because the constant search of the understanding gets in the way.

Breathing deeply and trying to wipe away the tears quickly so no one would see, I finished out the service by singing very appropriately, "We shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace." I felt like I wanted to embrace everyone and love even the most unlovable. I wanted to greet the members of this church family God has given me, holding them close to my heart. I want to trust that God knows what he is doing.

country roads, take me home

On the second day of the fourteen-hour journey northward, we cross into the county where I am from. Exiting off the highway, I search for the familiar. The only constant is change. Not remembering exactly what the landscape used to look like, I knew it had been different from what we passed on the road. Trees are bigger or missing altogether. Houses are in new places; some of the old ones are abandoned. Coming up to the corner I always expect to see the old church, even though I know it was moved to the historic district in town many years ago.

The stretch of land etched indelibly in my mind is what comes into view after rounding the final turn. Fields that have produced different crops over the years roll up against the base of the big hill. What once served as a place for little girls to slide down on their sleds in the winter is covered with trees--the tree I used to sit in, among them.

The barn, milking parlor and silos rest silently in the cool breeze after decades of use. A cooling pad for tanks of cherries is a reminder of the busy days of summer when trucks would bring the newly shaken cherries back from the orchard to soak in cold water before rushing them off to the processing plant. The best cherries I would ever eat were at the end of the drive-way where all I had to do was scoop some into a bowl to make a pie.

Old buildings that once housed families who came to help with the harvest have been torn down. A larger storage building replaced one of them while the other exists only in the step-by-step pictures taken to document the time I painted a flag on the door for a school project. A corn field takes over the place where the garden was once planted, and the rest of the yard is grass with trees that are bigger than I remembered.

The embroidered picture of the farm that I made still hangs on the living room wall; the picture of my sister and I playing a piano duet in the stairway. The door to my room is closed and though I know it has become the laundry room I want to open it to find my twin bed up against one wall with my sister's against the other, our green bedspreads neatly made and floral curtains on the windows; the shelves filled with our treasures. The trunk that contained my letters and journals is the only piece of furniture that went with me out into the world.

Taking the back way up to see my sister is like following an ancient map using landmarks as road signs. Turn at the house where so-and-so used to live and continue on the paved road even though the dirt road provides a more direct route.  Go past the tavern that is further out in the middle of nowhere and keep heading north. Each small town heralds travelers in its own special way as we catch a glimpse of how life is lived there. I keep reminding myself that as beautiful as all of the flowers are, most of these places are thrust into a deep freeze for many months each year and though they may host visitors in the summer, in the winter they become ghost towns for the locals who are used to the hardship of prolonged cold.

Reunions with relatives and friends require the energy to tell life events quickly and convincingly enough so that questions do not persist. To account for decades of life is an onerous task. I can barely comprehend that so much time has passed. It is my story and I can tell it any way I want, and yet words seem inadequate when I look into the eyes of some I have not seen since we were children. Though we can be recognized by our resemblance to our parents, we retain the image we once had in high school--an image long replaced by who we became in college, graduate school and the life that kept moving us on at a brisk clip toward middle age.

The memories others have of us are thrown up against our own. In the midst of all of the sorting, I wonder exactly who I used to be and who I have become. Leaving home was something I always dreamed of doing even though it must have been a shock for those who found out after the fact that I actually got into that car after college and headed out West. Most probably did not know that I even came East to attend graduate school since I ended up in the same place after graduation where my original dream had taken me. Getting married and having our first child far from my home made these events more myth than reality since the local community was unable to participate. Moving to the South, having a couple more kids and buying a house reinforced the truth that I was never coming back to the place where I am from, except to visit. I still grieve this loss at times, but cannot be fooled like an out-of-town tourist thinking this place is warm and filled with sunshine like it was during the days of our vacation, because I know better. It is very cold in the winter and the sun may not come out for weeks at a time. Having moved away, I know of other places that are less cold and dark. There remains, however, a part of me who longs to sit a while longer on that beach with the fine white sand between my toes as the sun sets over the calm blue water.  

Like so many celebrations, the class reunion was over before it began, leaving me feeling like I was a passenger on a bus with the doors opening too soon, forcing me out at the wrong stop. Walking back through the memories, I try to find something secure to hold onto. This time travel is messing with my mind. We light the lanterns to honor the dead trying not to think of who will make it to the next reunion and who may not. We have conversations with those we never spoke to in high school since our social groups did not intersect back then. Band geeks did not associate with football players even though we provided a half-time show at every game. Cheerleaders had no business talking with introverted nerds who expressed themselves more effectively in writing than by public displays of enthusiasm. We were all given a role to play and did not stray much from the script.

None of this matters any longer. Some classmates left town; some stayed and built a life. We all grew older. Some got married; some got divorced, and some never married at all. We have become parents and grandparents. We have found work and ways to contribute to our community. We all made choices. Some choices were made for us. In spite of all of our differences, we once shared a zip code and now share memories of growing up in and near a very small town by a great lake.

As the remaining few of us sat around a bonfire laughing at the running jokes that got funnier as the contents of the bottles lessened, along with our inhibitions, we looked at each other in the shadows remembering youth a while longer. And though we tried to sing along to a variety of different songs, there was only one song we all knew: "Country roads, take me home to the place I belong, Western Michigan, mountain momma, take me home, country roads." Even though we changed the words, I am pretty sure John Denver would not have minded.