Continuing from A Look Back – Part I

I awoke from a dream last night. This idea my wife gave me refused to be stored away in the closet of useless and forgotten suggestions. In the morning while my wife was pouring her coffee I said exactly this, “The spirit of God spoke to my heart last night and told me how to proceed with the idea we talked about.” I can say anything to that woman and she never makes me feel as though I’m strange or weird. She didn’t ask me what God said. She just said, “Oh, that’s good.” She went on to say that her office was having their lunch catered that day so she probably wouldn’t eat a big dinner. Then she was gone.

What did God say? He didn’t say anything. He didn’t sit on the edge my bed to tell me what to do, say, or write. For whatever reason I have learned to recognize his voice. It is quiet and warm. It draws me like the smell of baking bread. It fills me.

“Use this idea…this gift…this chance to tell our story…the story of us. I dare you to speak of why you hate me so. Tell of how I wounded and hurt you. Do not shy away from the fact that it was I who allowed your heart to be broken and brutalized. Tell of how I have plagued and disrupted your life. Tell that story.”

I could never do such…expose so much…offend so many.

“Yet I am asking. Do not write a word of my mercy and grace. Say nothing of my loving kindness to you…my blessing of you. Say I betrayed your trust….abandoned you…preyed on you. Leave everything out about the God and Jesus you learned of in church and Sunday school. Those things are just a molecule of who I am yet they are emphasized to the point of defining me. You think I’m vicious….say so. You think I’m cruel and brutal…say that too. But in the telling please try to explain why you keeping chasing me. Why hobbled and broken do you still pursue me when it was I who left you in that condition? Why do you cling to me like a child who can’t swim when you already know I’ll launch you back into the deep. Why do you love me?”

On a cold December night in 1960, I took my first breath. In attendance were of course my mother and I, my Aunt Mary and her class of fellow nursing students. In those days male family members including my father were not permitted in the delivery room but I’m guessing they were on hand in the waiting room.