I was ill-prepared when I set out on this little journey. The sun was high in the sky, the air crisp and warm with a slight breeze. At the end of the trail there are waterfalls, clearly marked with an orange star. But I will not make it there. My hiking boots are safe and sound on the other side of the continent in the dark of my closet, as I slip and slide in my black Adidas on the hard-packed snow and ice that carpets the trail.

I will make do with a large granite rock and the babble of the brook intermixed with the occasional car on the road that runs parallel.

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Have you ever found yourself saying no to God? I have. And let me tell you right now; it is the wrong side of the argument to be on.

 I have led an amazing Bible Study for the last 17 years and I started out on that path, at the very beginning with those words of ‘no’ in all their variations choo-choo-ing in my brain like a little toy train going around and around. “No, no. no.”

 God was pretty gentle with me, and patient, putting the bible story about the 10 spies who said no to him outside of the Promised Land into my head, (if you don’t know the story – look it up – it is pretty terrifying!).

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Sunday night, in Colorado Springs, I sat outside by a blazing fire with strangers and watched the gloriously white full moon turn the color of a blood orange in a total eclipse. It was amazing and beautiful – but it could not compare with the total eclipse of the sun on August 21, 2017. It is one thing for the moon to have its light from the sun blocked but to watch the light of the sun disappear is a whole different thing.

Did you see it? Do you remember the slight chill in the air? Travel back with me to that week of the sun going dark – I am glad I wrote about it then.

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We are all standing together in a big hole. It is deep, with slick steep sides. We can look up and see light – the blue sky above us – brilliant and sparkling. But when we look down, obscured by shadows, our eyes gradually adjust and we begin to see the ground moving beneath our feet.

 It is mud; sandy and thick and wet. It is much too soft to find a solid foothold. We shift our weight, and it fills in around our ankles. Quicksand; the stuff of Tarzan movies.

 It holds tightly to our ankles, gradually creeping up to encircle our calves. We lift our knees high, trying to step above the thick bone-cold mud that holds us in its grasp. We look at each other; we are in trouble.

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I was afraid that it would never be that good again.

 You know the feeling. That giddy feeling of happiness. Your heart beating a little faster when you were in his presence. The time of intimacy spent alone… just talking…and just hearing his voice. The comfort of being able to pour your heart out when the world stopped on its axis and started turning the wrong way around.

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Dare I write of a manger and a virgin giving birth? How do you possibly put pen to paper about such things?

Angels have sung songs about it; shepherds have crowded into a dark and foul shelter to see a newborn in his mother’s arms. The planets shifted in their orbit to send one star closer and brighter than all the rest. Stargazers charted their course and Herod slept fitfully in his bed unaware that a new king had come to town.

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There is a woman in my neighborhood who has homemade signs in her front yard. I don’t know her, but her signs speak volumes to me. Her signs are colorful and hand-lettered. She displays a popular slogan against a political candidate and carefully letters out an acrostic of negative name-calling. When I walk our borrowed dog past her house it makes me sad to see such ugly sentiments permanently on display, marking her space.

This is my own struggle lately. Harsh and judgmental words. 

Almost every morning I awake with my own words that I spoke carelessly the day before haunting me.

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I watched her, gorgeous and tall in her ivory jumpsuit, four-inch heels with ankle-straps, brown hair flowing almost in slow motion. Unbridled joy filled her face as she danced within the circle of teenagers, the music from the wedding DJ lifting the dancers as they clapped and spun in circles, faces and arms lifted high.

 Occasionally her husband would face her, pumping arms to the beat, before moving off to dance alongside others. 

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I wake this morning to the sound of gentle rain falling on my roof, and outside my windows. It is a gentle rain.

I wander through the house, cup of coffee in hand, looking out through discs of water clinging to glass, and beyond to the pine-straw dark and rich with moisture, the bamboo bowing down gracefully under its new weight. Rain. I am thankful for its arrival. But after three days, I will be happy for the skies to clear and the sun to shine again.

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The invitation.

The chance to respond.

What if it was never given?

What if the question was never asked? 

“Do you want to accept Jesus into your heart as your Savior?”

And I said, 

palms sweating against the back of the wooden pew in front of me,

knees shaking and legs like jelly,

pushing past my cousins lined up beside me,

“yes”.

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We like to keep God small and manageable. We may visit Him on Sundays from eleven until noon. We may look up into the night sky and exclaim His wonders. We may talk to Him when a friend has had a heart attack or our children are late arriving home. But we like to keep him contained. Not too big. Not too out of control.

We forget that the shepherd David was also outlaw and warrior before becoming king over a divided nation. He saw God larger than life. And he wrote love songs to Him. 

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The sun was already high in the sky as we took off for our neighborhood walk. My niece, my daughter, her baby in the stroller, and me. The neighborhood is hilly, the streets are winding with no sidewalks, so we walk in the street, at a leisurely pace in our leggings and athletic shoes. Pretending to get exercise. Mainly to talk women-talk and share our lives.

It is on the crest of a dangerous hill, where cars cannot see us because of the steep approach and the sharp descent that we pause near the driveway of a 1960’s once-modern house. Deep down its wooded slope, the shell of the house is undergoing extensive rebuilding after a kitchen fire. Construction rubble, charred framing, a trash dumpster. My daughter reaches down and picks up a small handful of wilting flowers. 

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‘Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

If I should die before I wake

I pray the Lord my soul to take’

Did you learn this bedtime prayer as a child? I think I must have. By the time my kids came along I was long gone from church and all its practices and I thought this was the most morbid prayer you could ever teach a child! 

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I have the awkward privilege of caring about Michael. It is a strange friendship that always needs explaining. I have become his voice to bankers and detectives, lawyers and prison wardens. It is not something I care to do in my spare time. And I can’t see how it will possibly have a happy ending. But here we go.

 It started with a story. It always does, doesn’t it? You know the story; the one of the school shooter, who slipped in the front door of an elementary school with an AK-47 and a backpack full of ammunition and by the grace of God was talked into laying that gun down as helicopters circled overhead and swat teams reloaded their rifles. School shooters never live to tell their tale. Michael did. So someone needed to talk to him. That would be me.

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My momma said she didn’t know why I liked my watermelon with salt on it. I thought it was our family thing… “Lord, no. I don’t know where you got that.”

 I dig around in my memory and realize whenever watermelon was involved, it came through the backyard balanced on the shoulder of Woodrow Bolding and was promptly placed in the pool to chill (that tells you a little bit about the temperature of that water). Later it was sliced length-wise into wedges and if you wanted, there were knives to cut your slice into little cubes of red juicy goodness and the tin salt shaker. 

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I wonder if it is my metabolism… my heart rate… my extreme ‘southerness’. Or is it something so hardwired into me before I was born that will never be anything other than what it is?

I dilly-dally. I linger. I reread paragraphs in books because I want to soak up one more time the loveliness of the words. 

I eat slowly and slice my portions into tiny bits to make each taste last longer. And then there is the conversation – it can go on for hours, can’t it? My poor son-in-law has not figured out yet that coming over for dinner is a long, slow-moving affair. Or maybe he has…

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The sun is stretching high into the sky, its light blinding and high already on this summer morning. White particles of dust float around me, reflecting the light as they dance between me and the dark leaves of the magnolias.

But looking longer, I realize they are not dust, but the tiniest flying insects, gifting me with morning entertainment.

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The text comes in at 7AM. “Surgery today. Please pray.” 

My nephew’s wife stood hard and fast onto her brake, trying to stop her car as the car from the opposing direction decided suddenly to turn left into her path. The children in the back seat were okay. Her foot was broken like the egg in the nursery rhyme and the doctors didn’t seem to know how to put it back together again. Small town in Mississippi. Eleven days. Three surgeries. And the pain continues.

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