You are loved here

Today I read an article which featured a photograph of a dinner ticket. The ticket showed an automatic gratuity scratched through and a note that read, "I give God only 10%, why should I give you 18%?" It was signed with the title Pastor in front of the patron's name.

The waiter who posted the photo on Reddit noted that the group of people whom he waited on were very congenial and polite. He said that the gratuity was added because the group included over 20 people, a standard practice at many restaurants.

Comments on the article, comments from a section of people who represent all of America and even some international readers, shed light on a majority view of Christians, and therefore Christianity.

Most of the comments said something to the effect of, "Way to be an example of Christ, who you claim to revere," and "This is why most people don't like Christianity anymore, because most Christians give it a bad name."

Misrepresenting God is what I believe these Christians are doing. No matter your view on tithing, Christians are called to serve and to love our neighbors. This note on the dinner ticket showed neither a servant's heart nor a loving heart.

And, that is why most people aren't attracted to my faith anymore. We Christians are not perfect and we are not supposed to be, but when mistakes are made on purpose, with authority, mistakes that misrepresent Christ and his ways, most people are not only going to be repelled by our faith, but in turn, they will be repelled by our God.

For what God could condone such arrogance and discharity? This is but a small reminder of the more grave actions Christians have taken in the name of God.

My God does not withold a tip from worthy waiter or even one who had a bad day. My God calls on us to reach out with love to such among us. My God does not hate gay people, or Muslim people, or atheists. My God calls on us to reach out with love to such among us.

There is a movement in the Christian faith to "love the sinner, hate the sin." I ask this: If we spend so much time trying to discern everyone's sins, to 'point them in the right direction,' how much time and energy are we investing in loving them?

People's sins are between them and God. Period. I was called to love God and to love others.

When I was going through my divorce and I felt abandoned by certain religious people, I expressed this to a very devout Christian friend. She said, "Well, you are loved here."

That is what all of us should be saying to each other. You are loved here. That's the message that first attracted us to God. That's the message that will represent Him to others.

To all of my friends and family and acquaintances, in my heart, you are loved here.

Discouraged

Today, I received a complaint about my prayer at the hospital. The doctor who was offended told the other chaplain that my prayer should have included a Catholic trinitarian formula. In other words, the doctor complained that I did not open the prayer with, "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit." 

I read an article today about a woman who was on her way to school, ready to catch a bus, when someone hailed her down. She pieced together that there was a young woman in labor nearby and ran over to help her. Miraculously, despite the fact that the laboring woman spoke no English and the other woman had no medical knowledge, she was able to assist her in delivering a healthy baby. It was a beautiful and happy story that ended with the baby being named after the woman who helped deliver it.

I was reading the Internet commenters' opinions on the article expecting nothing but well wishers and the occasional negative jab (it is the Internet, afterall), but the majority of the comments focused on the fact that the woman in labor spoke no English. They lamented the fact that this woman was probably an illegal alien and that she shouldn't have reproduced here in America.

Complaints about prayers. Complaints about healthy babies.

Be happy with me

My boyfriend is beautiful. I have never known a man like him. His hands are outstretched and full of gifts. He possesses a thoughtfullness unmatched by any other. When I speak to him, no matter how often (and it's quite often), and no matter how trivial, he listens and he hears me. He is remarkably patient and understanding.

We met under the most unlikely circumstances. I was married. David lived 1,138 miles away. I was bone achingly lonely. My husband's depression combined with his work schedule isolated him from me. I tried to break through it. I tried to love my way through it. I tried to pray my way through it. I tried to scream my way through. We were caught in a cycle that had no end.

1,138 miles away, David put fingers to keys and joined a website where other individuals like myself joined to talk about how lonely we were, how depressed, how disjointed we felt even in a room full of other people. We shared our stories which aren't remarkably similar, and yet, our connection was impossible to ignore.

We started writing to each other with more urgency. It wasn't inappropriate, per se ... However, the simple fact is a married woman shouldn't confide in a man 1,000 miles away, right? She should speak to the man committed to her, I know this, but that man simply was done listening.

It was not right of me to continue writing to David.

But, I did anyway.

He made me feel heard. He made me feel loved. He made me feel beautiful and special.

Over the period of our marriage and even our courtship, my husband told me that I was unattractive to him because I am overweight; told me that I had no common sense, that I was stupid; told me consistently that I was not good enough.

It was one week before Jon figured out I was writing to David. He found the evidence on our computer, because I don't know enough to hide such things and I didn't want to. One morning, I woke up and walked into the living room where the Bible was open on the kitchen table. Often I had asked Jon to read the Bible with me and at different times in our marriage, he had.

"What's this?" I asked him, pouring a cup of iced tea.

"Just thought we should read together," he said, nonchalantly.

I started reading verses in Proverbs about a whore who has committed adultery. I looked up at him. Smugly, he looked back at me.

"I know about your correspondence with David," he said.

In the time between that day and this, much has occured, of course. My heart burns with regret and suffering when I think of the pain I caused my husband, my exhusband, with this emotional infidelity across the Internet ... but I understand my motivation. My husband was cruel to me. David, in contrast, has always been kind.

I know that I not only signed a legal agreement committing myself to Jon for life, but that I also agreed before God to be joined to him eternally. It has been nine months since I met David, nine months since that fateful day when Jon confronted me, nine months since I decided to divorce him, and I still hurt every single day because I know I broke my vows.

I hurt every single day when I think of it.

I did not divorce Jon because I met David. I divorced Jon because he was controlling and cruel. I divorced Jon because I often begged him to get help and he refused. I divorced him because I put in every ounce of effort I had to love him, to make our marriage work, and he repeatedly, for years, said that he could not.

Meeting David reminded me that I'm not ugly, I'm not fat, I'm not stupid, I'm not unworthy. It reminded me that I have purpose. He reminded me that I may have years or only hours left on this earth and I don't want to live with someone who makes me feel like trash.

He sees me now and knows I'm still tripping over sadness like it's a pair of shoes in the living room. I confide in him still. I explain to him this complex array of emotions, this guilt and pain I'm still working through because of my divorce and everything preceeding it.

Beautiful brown eyes layered with velvet lashes plead with me.

"Be happy with me," he said kindly and sincerely. It was a gift to me, this offering of the intangible.

I'm trying, David. I promise.

Struggling

At the beginning of this year, I was married, a stay at home mom, a doting wife to a man who made me angry on a daily basis, a man who was pretty certain we would stay unhappily married for life, and to whom I was also certain I would attempt to remain committed to for eternity.

 

I used to ask him if it made him sad that there was no marriage in heaven, because it did make me somewhat confused and hurt. I gave so much of myself to him that I couldn't imagine not being with Jon in eternity, especially his sinfree self! He said it didn't matter to him much and that everyone would love everyone the same in heaven, that loving God would be our priority, as it should be now.

 

Jon had excellent ideas and intentions and was honest if not romantic. I was very attracted to the man he should have been. He simply wasn't the man he intended to be. I would have been very happily married to him if he would have kept up with half the things he intended and if he hadn't tortured me and himself so much about the rest. But, his standards for living a "godly" life became sins, the sins of control and meanness. His demands for himself and on me became impossible and led to years of unkindness and depression, a cycle that centered on his impression of God and one that became impossible to break.

 

I say it was impossible because for years I tried to help him break it. However ... all things are possible with God, and I do believe in my heart that if I had stayed married to my husband that God very well could have changed his heart eventually. I didn't want to wait for Jon to be kind to me, for Jon to stop controlling me. I didn't want to wait for God to change Jon or to fix my marriage, so I left. I regret this to a degree, and it's a heartbreaking regret, one that I may never quite come to terms with, but I also know that Jon's behavior was abusive and wrong... I have to come to terms with it, because for me and my daughter, I believe I made the right choice.

 

From a stay at home mom and wife to a divorced working mom is a big change, a hard change, and one that has caused emotional and even physical stress on my body. I'm doing my best for Daphne, for my family, for David, for my patients... it's hard. Sometimes my best sucks. I complain a lot. I don't pray enough. I don't seek God enough. I don't try enough. I eat too much. I list these negatives like a repeating soundtrack throughout my day, and I'm tired, I'm tired of it. I want to try harder and to do better, but it's hard.

 

This year has been hard. I'm working through it. I'm doing my best, but sometimes it's not enough.

Predetermined steps

As I seek God, there are some areas where I have to take an honest look at myself and at what I am really looking for.

 

I want to find Truth but I am limited by some areas where I have a predetermined view point.

 

I do not want to find a God who hates homosexuality; who annihilates entire races of people; who would have some suffer eternally because they worship Allah instead of Him; who is only male and not female (though I do call my God Father, I believe in my heart of His gender duality despite the pronouns).

 

While I seek God, I need to keep an open mind. My mind is somewhat closed to these views of God, though they are biblical and traditional. My mind is closed to them because they don't mesh with my heart's view of Him, of who I believe Him to be, or of whom I want Him to be.

 

What do I know of Holy? a popular song asks. Very little, I admit. Sacred encounters are few while daily life is overrun with inconsistent relationships, harried tasks, irritating conflicts, suffering, joys, sleeping, eating and monotony.

 

I spend many hours in prayer every week, asking God to heal the sick at the hospital. But, I don't really fellowship with Him like I would like to... I miss Him.

 

Without the Lord, my life is darkness. He gives me hope and light and mercy and love. I need Him and want Him more than any other. My soul cries out for Him, but I don't know Him.

 

Lord, while I seek you, open my mind and my heart to the truth of who you are. Provide me with resources, with people, with books to illuminate my mind and my heart to your truth. Reveal your mystery to me and speak your truth to me. Help me to know you as you truly are even if I am uncomfortable with who or what that is.

Killing hands

At the beginning of my day, I am given a list of all the hospital's patients and their room numbers. I know their name, their age, their gender and a one word description of their diagnosis. That's all I know about them before I knock on their door and introduce myself. There are, of course, some mild surprises: a 100 year old man with excellent hearing next door to a 47 year old dying woman. I used to see the age plus gender and calculate a judgement, but now I know each room contains a surprise; each person I speak to is very different.

 

Today, I met a man who murdered with his hands.

 

Age: 66

Diagnosis: Vomiting

 

He had been at the hospital a few days, so I knew he was probably dehydrated or else something malevolent hid beneath that diagnosis. (That's happened before, too. A diagnosis of pneumonia often hides lung cancer and other vicious ills.)

 

I walked into a dark room and he turned on the light. My eyes adjusted and he looked like everyone else. I'm becoming accustomed to this daily prayer walk with the patients and they look alike now, they are old or young, or black or white, or male or female. It's only in the talking to them that I know them and in the praying for them that they become people again. I hear their stories and I pray with them and they matter to me. They are on my heart, now, and I remember their details.

 

His details are on my fingertip.

 

"Hey there, young'n, young one, young girl, young woman, howyadoin?" he said.

 

I laughed and answered him that I was well.

 

"Well, well, yep, I'm swell, I'm Ronnie, or Ronzo, or Ronald. I get to go home today," he said. "I'm feeling a might better. Can you keep a secret?"

 

I smiled and nodded.

 

"I can't eat the shi ... crap they call food. (You said you was a preacher lady, right?) My wife's going to get me some REAL food at McDonald's," he said. "They said I can go home once'n I can keep some food down."

 

I prayed with him then, that his food would stay down, that he could go home and get some rest, and that God would bless his wife, who was a support and an encouragement to him.

 

"Hey, hey, you got that right," he said, when I finished praying. "My wife's been taking care of me for 40 years. Course, she is my second wife. Found the first one in bed with some dudezo when I got back from my first tour. Dropped my AWOL bag on the ground, threw a silver dollar at the dude humping my wife, and I said, 'You just bought the bitch.' I walked across the street to Dadzo's house and, boy, you want to talk about surprised? My dadzo was so happy to see me home. I showed him that guy getting into his car across the way, holding all his clothes and shit in his hands, and I said, 'Dadzo, we're getting drunk.'"

 

I laughed with him.

 

"So, I got drunk for the next two days, with Dadzo and Moms, and then I decided to take another tour over there. Fucking Viet Nam. See, over there, you knew who the enemy was ... I fucked up some Mama Sans. I did some evil shit over there," he said and the room got colder and darker. 

 

I looked at him seriously and nodded for him to go on. In the short time I have been here, I have heard confessions, and this seemed like his.

 

"I couldn't help it. It was just ... See, it was just these fuckers in black pajamas over there, and we were bad motherfuckers, you know? I used to fucking staple an ace of spades to their heads after I did em. It was my calling card," he said. 

 

I swallowed and nodded again.

 

"It ain't no different than what they're doing over there now in Iraq," he said. "But now these guys come back and they're fucking heroes. You know what they called me? A baby killer," he spat.

 

It was quiet for a minute. I waited for him.

 

"Oh, well. You keep serving God. I'm a believer, you know. I seen heaven when I died," he said.

 

"You have? Tell me about it," I said seriously. He looked up at me.

 

"Come here," he said. I came over to him. "Give me your hand." I gave it to him.

 

He took my finger and placed it on his forehead. There was an indentation that before wasn't visible but my finger took in its details. It felt like two plates of his skull didn't quite mesh together there.

 

"That's where I got shot. Dunzo. See this hole on the side? That's where the bullet came out. I went to heaven. I saw my grandma. See, I ain't seen my grandma since I was nine or ten years old. I saw her and she hollered for me to go in the gates. So, I put my leg in and I heard the most beautiful voice and I saw this hand with a, well, like a square railroad tie? In the middle? I saw this hand like to push me out and the voice said, 'Ronald, I am not ready for you.'"

 

I was standing very close to him. My finger still remembered the hole in his skull. He smelled like a spicy aftershave and his steel grey hair was greasy.

 

"I felt my soul crash back down to earth. When I woke up, a colored woman was putting a tag on my toe. I popped up and she screamed, 'You're alive!'" He laughed loudly. "I will see him again someday, but God ain't ready for me just yet, young lady," he said.

 

I laughed too and soon after made my exit.

 

I look at my hands, hands that held my baby, hands that pray, hands that destroyed my marriage, and I think about murdering hands, healing hands, about people and their stories, and I seek. I seek God in this. This is life. We are all a part of this creation, His creatures, and He loves us so.

 

Equally so? So much He sent His son to die for us. To suffer and die. An ace of spades on the forehead of someone's mother. God, where are you in this? In the redemption, in the forgiveness, in the grace and renewal. In the details, God, I seek you.

Healing

HEALING

I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections

And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly that I am ill

I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self

And the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help

And patience, and a certain difficult repentance,

Long, difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistake, and the freeing oneself

From the endless repetition of the mistake

Which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify

D.H. LAWRENCE

I met a man today who told me his hands were healing hands.

I have no reason to doubt him.

He was quite sane.

I chose to sit by him at a luncheon today, a stranger, a man among a sea of women, all of them decades older than I am. I introduced myself and he smiled and said, "I have a story to tell you."

He spoke of Paraguay then, a country foreign to me, and he told me of a girl named Adella. Migraines razored her brain regularly and she couldn't join the group he was speaking to one day, so he asked if he could pray for her. In Adella's tent, he saw rags covering her face to keep out the slivers of light that punctured her eyes. He placed his hand on her and demanded that the Holy Spirit of God heal her in the name of Jesus.

He told me, moments later Adella slid the rag from her brow and motioned to him excitedly ... Healed.

His greatest joy, he said with some stilled emotion, was seeing this same girl with her newborn baby the next year, after he had prayed for that life inside her, because Adella had miscarried the two babies before this.

His hands healed, he said, because he had faith they would and because the people whom he healed had faith that God would heal them.

Christians all know the Biblical examples of healing stories, not just the Divine cases where Christ placed his perfect hands on a broken limb and it straightened, but where the disciples, sinners just like us, had the power to heal.

Skeptics scoff... Of course. That's what they do.

I seek. I want to know of this healing. I want to know if it's a matter of faith or a matter of prayer or a matter of fate. I want to know if God's mind can be changed... Do we just need to stand on this? Remind Him of the suffering ones here? Believe it can be done ... and it will?

Healed. This girl and the others he spoke of were healed. I believed this man. He was not lying to me and he was not lying to himself. Did his hands heal? Did God use his hands?

I don't know the answers to my questions, yet. Even as I pray for healing for my friends, for my cherished loves, for my patients, for myself, I wait for the mystery to be revealed. I wait and I seek.