Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Duck and Goose

The Still Small Voice, which the original Hebrew translates as The Thin Silence, has been guiding people since time began. God talks to people all the time. Maybe they're listening. Maybe they're not. Maybe they don't recognize it. They call it, intuition, or a nudge, or a feeling.

For me it is sometimes an audible voice, sometimes a phrase that will not leave my brain, sometimes a quiet certainty. This time, the later was drawing me to the StoryVision Weekend Retreat sponsored by the Northwest Christian Writers Association and lead by Mick Silva. Shaky finances, newly booted out of my writing office for 'overusing the building', and blown head gaskets that needed repairing threatened my ability to obey the impulse to attend. But I stayed the course. I have learned about pushing through opposition. If I don't do it, I miss a blessing.

In the world of Christian Faith, moments when God's goodness simply overrides any evil to introduce pure love and destiny in the clearest way possible, are called Kairos moments. I knew down to my toes that this weekend was such a moment.

And there they were, a flock of women readily able to peel back the layers of their hearts and narratives, in a setting where the focus was, as a friend of mine once described 'opening up a vein and pouring the blood into words on a page".

Confirmation for a path upon which one is on is frequently meted out by the kinship of others. So it was that weekend. 
Out in the world, a discussion of feelings or reflections on the narrative of one's journey from the inside out is viewed as TMI. Definitely too much information. Castigation for seeming boundrilessness comes in the form of grimaces and a slow retreat to another part of the room. Here, in this place of serenity and beauty, we took turns sharing that which was shaping us as people, as women, and the challenges of putting those words down on paper. 

Steady on, I began to tell myself. Keep going. Deeper. Wider. More intense. No stepping back, but rather, peering into even more darkness and bringing it into the light. I saw the arc of my story as a writer stretch across a sky I had not lifted my head to see before.

Laughter around a campfire. Sharing in the bright light of a well windowed living room. Sleep, with the sounds of others moving through their night rhythms, all drew me into my own calling. I became more at ease with those words I had already written and more eager to discover the ones yet to find their life in my sentences.

On the last afternoon, we sat gazing at the water while Mick gave us his final and best encouragements. My eyes found pleasure in watching the odd coupling of a white duck and a Canadian goose on the dock stretching out beyond us. They seemed friends. They sat contentedly side by side. What an odd pairing I thought to myself. 

Unexpectedly, the Goose rose to slip in the water. That's when I saw his left leg clearly injured, crippled, useless. As he hopped his way into the water, the white duck followed , his companion. 

That's us, I thought. Us writers all try to get to the water with one leg injured at some time or another. In the water, we can glide as others do, but the trek from dock to water needs companionship. Because we are all so different as writers, we look like odd pairings as we cajole and urge each other on to do the difficult to get to that which creates ease or pleasure for others. 

How like God to take my obedience to the impulse of the Holy Spirit and bless me with new colleagues, new understanding, and one terrific metaphor for the days when I type up in isolation the deepest parts of my heart.
Love,
Deborah

Monday, November 16, 2015

A New Thing

According to the Youtube description, I'm listening to ten  hours of waves crashing. It's the noise in my ears that helps me focus when I'm letting words come to me, or making choices about which ones to use.

This isn't the life I'd planned. I'm supposed to be happily celebrating about my thirty something year of marriage and taking care of my three grandchildren while I work my last couple of years in the church as a pastor who enjoys creating music. Instead I am a houseguest of friends who are supportive of me carving out a new life. Three of my children are alienated from me and two of them are involved in benignly, but effectively toxic situations that keep them from the truth of their stories. My husband left me for another woman and left me with nothing but the furniture. My youngest daughter, the only one I got to raise alone, remains in my life working towards her dreams and goals, steady as she goes.

How did all that happen?

At the end of my thirties I prayed a prayer God took very seriously. In the beginning of my forties I asked some questions and set some limits. All hell broke loose. I lost about everything and ended up with virtually no family or career but a 'yes' answer to my prayer. I told God I wanted Jesus to be so real to me I could feel his hand in mine. I forgot to say, 'If you can do all that without it costing me anything, I surely would appreciate it.'. Pruning hurts. Separating the wheat from the chaff, well, chafes. Purifying like the gold/dross thingy causes third degree burns.

But I was given a column in a newspaper. All the while I wandered around the enclosed paddock in which God had me, literally surrounded by water on all sides and absolutely no doors of escape opening, Surrounded by people who were very wounded -- let me underscore that-- VERY wounded, who took as license my presence to be an opportunity to torture, I was subjected to ' planned aggression'.

"Anybody can love a friend", it says in scripture. But these people were so wounded they could lie more easily and often than they told the truth.

God gave me no out. There was no escape. I had only one choice. I was going to have to rely on my faith and I was going to have to learn to let myself be loved and cared for. Letting myself be poured into was not easy. Mainly because I didn't need this amount

I needed this
I was devoid of every last ounce of resources... except my faith.
I had to learn to get spit on, and defamed and shunned and discredited and keep a soft heart and refrain from retaliation. 
Most importantly, I had to learn to listen for, to and follow the Holy Spirit. Eventually, every path was cut off to me save one. In a most daring moment of faith, I utterly trusted in God. I put everything in storage, rented an office where I could work a lot and slept  in my car. 

Everything broke loose for the good. 
In the days after this, in many ways and formats, I will be telling the story of The Grand Adventure. For now, let me suggest it is an option to seek something beyond this world and find in it, in that Love, life and fullness of time; days that are not just spent but lived. I am so happy God seriously answered yes with the creation of a whole new thing. What happens when your heart is broken will decide if you rerun the previous situation or move on to something else.
Love,
Deborah