The Way It Should Be

I made some decisions early in my life. I decided that I was enraptured with Christ and the scriptures. I decided that the church that I grew up in didn't reflect what I saw in the scriptures, and horrified my family by refusing to go through the rite of confirmation. In God's redemptive economy, I did go back to a service in a church of this type (albeit in a different synod), and received what was probably the most dramatic inner healing that I can remember. God can show up and do something real wherever He is honored; the choice lies with the people there that day.

I've been on a quest throughout my life to see the real thing spiritually. The failure to be impressed with unsubstantiated appearances has been a universal principle in my life. I remember commenting on an awards ceremony as a young child that it was silly to make that big of a fuss over people who put their pants on one leg at a time just like everybody else. It's led me in some unexpected directions, but nothing succeeds like success. I know the real deal when I see it.

One of my favorite scriptures is one that I've mentioned elsewhere: "God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing...." (Ps. 68:6a). God has set a number of people in my life to replace the side of the family that had taken their leave that function more like family than the departed ones did--may God have mercy on them. They're too numerous to list here, but this weekend we got to see several of them.

The Guitar Player is my son's big brother from God. I got to know him when I was one of three people that made it to one of his coffee house shows (the other two being his parents). He's a former pastor that came to feel that there was not enough of the real thing in his denomination, leading he and his wife to become part of the house church movement. My son was a fairly faithful regular at their Tuesday evening Bible studies when he lived in their neck of the woods.

The Equestrienne is a friend that has been more like a big sister to me since I was 18, and actually finished raising me. She taught herself horsemanship, with a little help from my Dad at the beginning. He was vastly different than the misguided father she had known. For all intents and purposes, he adopted her. She trains both horses and riding students.

The Linguist is someone whose path I was thrown into until we finally bonded. When her sister disowned her during a period when her family was not being present during a difficult time in her life, I adopted her. She shares my love of art and multiculturalism, and makes me feel less alone in the world. Her career as a self-employed translator brings her into contact with an array of different people.

The Helper is always there when you need something. She calls once a week or so just to let you know that she remember that you're there, which has been critically important during these months of relative isolation. She and her husband attended Christ for the Nations Institute not long after they married, and came to view service to the people around you as an important expression of faith. She does a lot of uncompensated tasks in her position as church secretary.

The Liaison finds herself guided into tasks that involve bridging gaps. She just finished a year in the VISTA program bringing a women's transitional shelter's needs to the community. Now that she's done, she seems to be inundated with information supporting what is probably her real calling--bridging the gap between the culture in which she was raised and her birth culture on the Native reservations.

The Soldier's Mom has this ability to find the path amid the smoke, and I'm grateful to have her in my life. She can find a forward-moving perspective in some pretty deep murk. Most of our conversations have to do with sorting out for each other what's actually going on and how to handle it. It's ironic how much easier it sometimes is to assess someone else's situation and to lose the forest for the trees in your own. The family of God is constructed so that we need each other.

Everybody's Mom has taken care of her own kids, raised her friend's grandchildren, and taken in strays with various degrees of formality and duration. One of the strays was my son, who she helped to get to school back in the days when I left for work at 6 AM, and for several weeks last year when our family was at such loose ends. She loves you even when you feel that most other people have had it with you.

The Entrepreneur learned risk-taking in her former days in a religion that requires door-to-door recruiting. She built her cleaning business knocking on random doors and taking referrals. Her other forays are into the prisons to aid reintegration of inmates into society, and into the troubled lives of domestic abuse victims. She's under the impression that these things require more going and fewer committees to discuss the subject.

The Comedienne was not present, but was certainly discussed and missed. I would love to see her enter a position that would appreciate her ability to facilitate group communication and lift the mood of any room that she enters with her professionally-honed improvisational skills, rather than laboring under collective stress in a struggling marketing firm. She's probably much on my mind because I need to call her after her first day back to work for the week. Even the cheerful need some cheering sometimes.

The occasion was my son's departure to Job Corps. It was a long time coming, but the date was finally announced. The six days between the call and the actual trip to the bus station involved packing, sorting, and as many goodbyes in person as could be managed.

Friday was Grandma's day. We do actually have some blood relation that still acknowledge us. My Mom has put up with a lot of turmoil, and has been there for us through thick and thin. Some still see that as the role of family and community, thank God. She gave him some party money for the next day, as well as some of his beloved hot buffalo chicken. Without Grandma, we never would have made it.

We did leave for a few hours to get my stuff out of Mrs. Everybody's Mom's garage. It was stashed there when she followed me down to take the last car to the salvage yard, and has been shuffled around this last year until I got another car that had an empty trunk. We had to catch up on the latest news about her granddaughter that has been the subject of an abuse case because of her commentary on her visitations with her mother. I don't know many people with simple, problem-free lives. It helps us empathize with each other.

The next day started early. We went to see the young assistant pastor from the area that was speaking down the road at our former church. He can draw quite a crowd, partially because he combines very diligent scholarship with authenticity. He ain't from here, and hasn't picked up some of the conventional just-because-we-do moves. The most encouraging thing for me personally was to hear about his plans to return to his native Zambia next month to set up a prayer center and apartment community in which widows and orphans can live interdependently. His value for prayer is seen in his willingness to pay these women to staff the prayer center. The other encouraging thing was getting to talk to Mrs. Soldier's Mom for a few minutes. My son left with a number of questions, which we discussed on the way to our next stop.

Ms. Equestrienne had told us about a seminar at the health food store that she would be attending. We at least got to sit next to her at the event, although the fact that it ran 2 1/2 hours over its scheduled time kept us from having a conversation just then. We did learn some things, and I got to watch my son ask some insightful questions that showed how analytical he's become. We finally had to leave to make it to our next scheduled event.

We wanted to go to the restaurant that had been designated in our visitation order as a pickup/dropoff site as a choice rather than as something that we were compelled to do. It's a good reminder of how God got us through that very difficult time. I'd told Ms. Linguist that we would arrange our meal there to accommodate the open part of her afternoon so that she could join us. Fortunately, Ms. Entrepreneur had an open evening, so she also joined us. The three of us had done several after-meeting get-togethers following the domestic abuse support group that we all attended. In the process of the conversation about where cooking was going to lead my son in the future, Ms. Equestrienne called as the seminar finally ended. She confirmed the start time for Mr. Guitar Player's show that evening, and felt that she could probably make it out. After Ms. Linguist had to leave, I got to once again see my son demonstrate some of the insight his perseverance has wrought in his life as we discussed deep subjects with Ms. Entrepreneur.

We were so long at our discussing that it was time to head downtown to the show. We put the cars in the parking garage, since that's a good way to minimize frustration on a weekend evening in that city. We were fortunate to get there a little early and pick our table, since that ended up being the biggest Mr. Guitar Player coffee house show that I can remember. Ms. Equestrienne didn't make it until about the halfway point, since things on the acreage were being affected by the ice. Her strength of purpose, ability to cry out to God when she runs out of strength, and love of horses keeps her going despite a significant case of fibromyalgia; I wish I had her ability to release frustration through tears. I think the evening brightened her outlook, as she thanked me for her very late birthday card that acknowledged what a big part of my life she'd been. Mr. Guitar Player invited my son to play harmonica on one of his rarely performed songs that happened to be in the right key for one of the harmonicas he had with him. It sounded great to Mom, anyway! He also did his "Amazing Grace" medley that included the Nirvana version, the Elvis version, and the Gilligan's Island theme version. Mr. Guitar Player's parents sat at the end of one of our tables, and his brother and sister-in-law sat at the next table. They're both huggy guys, and sent hugs around. It was family night in several ways. Ms. Entrepreneur and Ms. Equestrienne had never met, and did get into a conversation that started with horses and ended with natural foods and supplements. In the meantime, my son helped Mr. Guitar Player load equipment. He then got into a conversation with a gentleman that I've seen in a number of places in that city. He came away from that conversation higher than a kite: after hearing about his "evangelistic gift" so many times, he finally saw it kick in and roll! Both conversations kept up until the staff gently pointed out that the shop had actually been closed for 45 minutes. My son gave his number to the gentleman, and Ms. Entrepreneur and Ms. Equestrienne made me promise to get their contact information to each other. We got back at 1 AM on a very cold morning. That's the happiest that I've seen my son in some time, despite the weather.

We did make it to both the morning and evening church services on Sunday. The youth pastor and his wife (Ms. Equestrienne's son and daughter-in-law--it's a small world!) made sure that he had a small sendoff party at the evening youth service. He spent a lot of time listening these last several months, and was a great asset to my son. The only other guys that he'd regularly gotten to talk to were one of Mrs. Everybody's Mom's sons by text and phone periodically, and Mr. Guitar Player now and then over the phone. I remember when we were praying for him not to die before he got his life right with God and was in a bad motorcycle accident. God heard us, and then some! The evening ended with a call from Mrs. Helper, who wanted us to stop by on our way in since she couldn't get away to join us at the bus stop, and some last-minute repacking.

Monday also started early. We were advised by the letter from Job Corps to have him at the bus depot no later than 9:30 AM, and the director of the organization that has hosted us since my son's abuse and stalking by a church elder (long story for another day) told us to be there at 9 AM. We did stop at Mrs. Helper's house, who fed my son and I breakfast and visited with us, giving the driver time to wake up a little more. Still, I went to the wrong area, but the resourceful son called and got us a landmark that simplified the matter for the driver. We had no more than walked in when Ms. Linguist followed, relieved she hadn't missed us. My complex explanation of our plans had her thinking he was actually leaving at 9 AM, but I've been known to make things more complicated than they need to be. They started a conversation in which my son shared his spiritual journey and the "coincidences" that weren't, and the last-minute saves that showed us that God hadn't forgotten us. I could see that Ms. Linguist was appreciating his commentary, since the distance that her relatives have shown her despite professed spirituality had sent her on a quest for the real thing. Somewhere in there, Ms. Equestrienne called to talk to my son, since she wouldn't be able to make it in. They completed their conversation, allowing my son and Ms. Linguist to pick up where they left off. They were interrupted again by the Job Corps rep, who impressed us by showing up to make sure everything was running smoothly. I somewhat regretted that they didn't finish that conversation, but they can perhaps renew it via e-mail when my son gets fluent in that communication skill with his new address. We finally put him on the bus, and she told me how mature he'd gotten, and what an asset he would be to anyone who got him. We both hoped he could end up cooking someplace that would allow him to do the kind of sharing that he'd done Saturday night.

We weren't ready to part company after the bus left, so we agreed to go to a coffee shop near the campus, where I needed to pick up a duplicate W-2. On a whim, I called Mrs. Liaison to see if she could join us. Our conversation, as usual, was about helping the downtrodden and the righting of wrongs, and about our friend, Mama Grace, who had returned to the Sudan. I'd had the privilege of taking her to the Consulate to get the work permit that took five years of hard-fought effort to obtain rather than the projected three months, due to the lack of diligence on the part of her attorney. We also recalled how Ms. Comedienne had been so "on" and had cheered us all up the day that she came down with us to another coffee house three weeks after the death of Ms. Linguist's #2 son, and how we needed to see how we could draw her out now that she was in a time of great stress. In the midst of the conversation, my phone rang with a return call from Mrs. Liaison, to my delight and that of Ms. Linguist, who hadn't yet gotten to meet her! We spent the final 45 minutes discussing how God had revealed her origins to Mrs. Liaison through a series of dreams about Native people, and about introducing herself to her birth family, and the way He was now guiding her efforts to obtain a better way of life and access to the spiritual teachings that had so faithfully aided her for her people. Ms. Linguist again got to listen to someone share some real spirituality, and was quite excited at the assurance that it brought, and that it was leading toward helping people. I'm glad for the people in my life that are after something real. They have plans together for later in the week.

I'm glad for many things today--for those that we were able to see, for those that couldn't make it but have greatly touched our lives with the reality of their walk with God, for the last-minute saves, for the chance to see the God of love intersecting our courses according to His purposes. As I experience yet another sick day, I have an overwhelming picture of hope to assure me that it's not over yet.