A Clearing Season - First Clearing

“Your Lenten discipline requires breaking your heart for God”

Atlanta to Sao Paulo, Brazil, Sao Paulo to Mexico City, Mexico City to Atlanta, Atlanta to Houston.

This past week and a half has been hectic, it was good to experience time in church on Sunday, excellent Adult Education class and then a great service and sermon.

As I sit in my hotel room in Houston, I reflect back to four years ago when our world fell apart.  As we adjusted to withdrawing Patrick from college due to his suicidal tendencies, as we checked him out of the first mental hospital, he revealed to us that he has been sexually abused by his music teacher. 

I remember that for at least 2-3 days, I had zero emotion, not a thing.  No nothing.  It was the strangest thing.  But then the one morning, as I was out for a run, the dam broke.  Tears, massive tears, anger, frustration, hate, embarrassment overwhelmed me.  I couldn’t control it anymore.  I was broken, and quite frankly, my brokenness was nothing compared to Patrick’s brokenness.  I still had my faith in God, I still relied on God to get through everything, but Patrick had lost his faith in God, he was angry and bitter toward God. 

I sit here now in tears, so many times, I end up in tears thinking about and remembering those days and the pain that Patrick has gone through, still goes through, and what we’ve been through.  We will never be the same, our lives are changed forever.  But I still believe, and I won’t change my belief, somehow, this will ultimately lead to something that will be to the glory of God.

While my week has been hectic and overwhelming at times, I continue to find blessings to help me see God’s work in my days.  Catherine Foster’s sermon Sunday was incredible, and she had one line at the end that really hit home, particularly thinking about what we had been through.  She said:

“So when the setbacks and storms of life come, and they will, don’t try to get out of the boat and walk on water. Stay in the boat, work with the brothers and sisters God has placed at your side, look for God IN the storm, and worship the Lord for his provision and grace.”

I remember when we were in our deepest, darkest moments, we had so many people from our church, from work, our family, that helped pull us through.  We had plenty of brothers and sisters in the boat with us, and they helped us through the storm.  And God was there, He was always there, suffering right along with us.  We couldn’t have made it through without God and without all of the people who helped us along the way.

I also had a major revelation this week (or actually, Laurel did).  We had an issue this week with Sean that came up, and my immediate reaction to Laurel was to vent and express that I would not do anything to help.  As I went out for my run, I was angry and frustrated with myself for my reaction.  But afterward, I said to Laurel that she needs to understand that sometimes I react, I vent, but ultimately, it’s just a reaction, and I need to get it out and then do what I need to do.  She said, “of course I know that.  You’d do anything for our kids, I know that, it doesn’t matter what it is, you’d do anything for them.”  

I may not be my Dad, I may not be the cheerleader that he was, but nothing will stop me from doing whatever it takes to help my children whenever they need anything.  She knew it, I probably knew it, I just need to understand myself as well as she understands me.

More blessings?  So many!  Just a few snippets of God’s providence:

• From Adult Education, a line from John O’Donohue’s “To Bless the Space Between Us”, this line, “Though suffering and chaos befall us, they can never quench that inner light of providence”.  Each week, I can’t believe how excited I get to go to Adult Education, it’s really a great group of people, and I gain so much insight from them.

• I downloaded a few songs from the soundtrack to “The Shack”, including “Stars” from Skillet and “Heaven Knows” from Hillsong United.  From ”Stars”, “If you can calm the raging sea, you can calm the storm in me” and from “Heaven Knows”, “Hold my heart, don’t let it bleed no more, sometimes forgiveness is like a man at war”.  Always great to have new music for my morning runs to get me ready to face a new day.

• Clinging Cross Ministry – I sent a Clinging Cross up to Callie Picardo, Vice President for Development at United Theological Seminary.  Callie is about to give birth to her first child, and she has helped to give me a great deal more faith in God’s provision and the power of prayer.  There’s a blog post coming on this, by the way, later on.  She is just an incredible young lady.

As I finish up this post, I reflect to my run this morning, and once more, “Keep Your Eyes on Me”:

“Keep your eyes on me

When you’re lost in the dark

Keep your eyes on me

When the light in your heart is

Too burned out to see

Keep your eyes on me”