was now bordering on atheism. I was decidedly and willfully numb. So what to do? Repeat my pattern, of course; focus on what is next because surely it’s going to get better, right? You could literally insert my previous sentences here: “I kept my grades up and my eyes fixed on getting through and getting out. There was so much pain in those years (the details of which I will spare you) that I just focused on surviving to get to what was next. Then next came, but it wasn’t any better.”
Partying and working a dead end job was all there was to life after graduation. At this point I no longer even realized I was in free fall; movement is sensed relative to something else but my surroundings had become one continuous blur; I had lost all perspective and context, my very sense of self. I was no longer questioning if God was real, I wasn’t sure life was real and if it was, it was of no real importance and had no real purpose. Just a series of events to which I was attached, life was an endless cycle: do, complete, and move on to what is next. So boys and girls, what comes next? Ah yes, first comes love (and college) … then comes marriage … then comes baby in the baby carriage! So goes the playground song and so it was for me. I would keep moving toward what was next but, as the saying goes, wherever you go, there you are and so next was never better and never satisfied the longing inside me for something real.
There was a moment when I was pregnant with our first son that “next” brought about a stirring of sorts. I decided one day that the next thing after a baby is born is a baptism; I had planned to return to the no-church-needed-just-love-God pattern of my family of origin, since we were about to become a family and all, but I also wanted to incorporate my husband’s family pattern which included baptizing babies (you could say they are one notch above my family and fall into the used-to-go-to-church-but-now-go-just-for-Christmas-and-Easter category (aka C & E-ers)). But there was an issue, I couldn’t ask for the baby to be baptized if I hadn’t been baptized myself; the vows wouldn’t make sense. So I told my great-aunt, who called the pastor in her small town where my great-grandparents had lived, who agreed to baptize me (and her while he was at it) and even agreed to do it in private (I suspect that all this was in part because he was so thrilled to put two professions of faith down on his charge conference paperwork that year; this sort of thing doesn’t happen very often in a town with a population of 127 and two new souls, in terms of population ratios, is a veritable Billy Graham Crusade. I include this little side note because I find it both ironic and sadly funny for those who know the joys of denominational statistics and realize that I am now serving as a mainline denomination pastor; perhaps God does have a sense of humor.) So I was baptized and the vow, well, it kind of started to work on me and make me think and then there was the water; though I cannot really explain it, as it was poured on my head, it did not feel normal; something was different. In hindsight, I see how God began to take this opportunity to get His foot in my door and even though I did not fully realize it, I was marked, set apart, and He was not about to give up on me.
So, what’s next? Have the baby. It had been a very rough pregnancy and I had been incredibly ill (again, sparing you the details) so we braced ourselves for complications, and they came. An emergency C-section came first, then the developmental delays by 6 month, the seizures started at 8 months old, then we were told it might be genetic and wind up causing permanent brain damage; oh, and that’s also right when we found out we were pregnant again. Suddenly next was not only lacking in satisfaction, it was filled with fear. I did not want what was next anymore. I was terrified, not only because I had one potentially very sick baby and another on the way but because all my hope had always been in what was next and now, for the first time, I knew next was going to be awful. This was the beginning of my “rock bottom”. My way, my pattern for survival no longer worked, no longer made any sense. It was not going to get better going forward; going back or staying put were not options either. I had no control and I was suddenly aware that the ground, which had escaped my attention during my free fall, was fast approaching, so close I could count the blades of grass. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Like a record skipping in my head, I asked myself this question in a frantic state of panic for weeks, months.
There was nothing I could do but I could not believe that; that would mean I had failed and I never failed. I always moved to what was next but now, the definition of next had changed; someone had changed the rules mid-game and it wasn’t fair. I got angry, mostly at myself, then at God, the doctors, anyone within earshot. It was exhausting and it only got worse. Our second son was born incredibly sick with a bacterial infection and coded several times. The weeks in the NICU are a blur and I do not even remember what, if anything I thought of God; I just recall the question, “why?” Why was this happening to our older son? Why this now for our newborn? Why were babies dying in the NICU? Why had any of the terrible things that had happened to me, or anyone else for that matter, ever happened? I moved from anger to despair.
Eventually, we brought our son home but over this milestone and everything else was hanging this fear; what would the future hold for me, for us? Running on fumes a few months later, I took our 20 month old to the children’s hospital two hours away to be sedated for an MRI and to be fitted with a multitude of wires he must wear for a 24 hour EEG. When I got there, I was told I could not go in with him. That was it, one of those moments when you feel yourself break. He was screaming and I just stood there, watching the bay doors close. I must have wandered down the hall but I don’t remember arriving at the sign that pointed to the chapel. Yet there it was, to my left so I walked into the room. There, on the wall in back, was a painting; a sepia Jesus. I turned away, overwhelmed, angry, scared, exhausted, confused, and I dropped to my knees, sobbing uncontrollably. A woman came in, saying nothing that I can recall, but instead bent down next to me and with her arm around me she simply remained. I have no idea how long we knelt there or who she was but after a time she hugged me and smiled. I nodded, trying to say I would be all right. Then as I stood, I felt a bit of that peace I had experienced, just a bit, just enough to assure me that even though my prayer had had no words, God somehow heard it.
This would perhaps make a better story if I could say, “From that day forward I felt God’s presence and I decided to surrender all my fears over, and everything was so much better …,” but I’d be lying. You see I was, like so many, stubborn and stiff-necked. I would take steps forward but only very slowly; oftentimes without realizing they were God-directed until years later; I would call it a “gut feeling” or something dismissive like that. Eventually, over a few years, I became more and more hopeful and grateful as the children’s health improved, the seizures stopped and fears of a genetic disorder were put to rest.
The shift that had begun when I was four, that had lay dormant for years, that had stirred in unlikely ways and under painful circumstances slowly but steadily began to increase in its pace and scope. I moved from a rhetorical, angry questioning, “God, what are You doing?!”, to a place where the tone changed to pleading and longing, “God, what are You doing?” When the autism diagnosis came for our oldest and then, through incredible therapy and medical interventions he eventually recovered, I thought, “Maybe God is doing.” And when, for no apparent reason we felt compelled to move from Massachusetts to the Carolinas and I was faced with knowing practically no one, I finally started asking, “God, what should I do?” It was there that we connected to a church for the first time in our marriage and I began a rapid learning and growing process; it was like a wildfire that had smoldered for a long time had finally caught a good gust of holy wind. I moved into leadership roles and began to sense a call to ministry. My husband’s life was transformed before my eyes and we began pursuing the steps necessary for me to answer my call after our third son was born, healthy. There was seminary and my first appointment as a pastor; the many trials that all this entailed where at times seemingly insurmountable but the joys were tremendous as well. I finally went from planning what was next at the cost of the present to finding joy in the day at hand and waiting with excited expectation to see what God had next. Then, when the storms in my life came, which they did and continued to do, I finally started asking, “God, what are we going to do?” At last I realized that I was neither alone, nor a puppet; I was walking with God; the God who caught me inches from the ground when my parachutes failed and had patiently, persistently worked to reveal the truth that had always been there, that He had always been there.
Just like my four-year-old self, I am mesmerized by the Messiah in my midst and I wonder how I could have missed