There are times in life where the foundation of who you are or perhaps it's the culmination of what you think you are or what you are supposed to believe in is revealed in a light that is sent swiftly down an avenue of doubtful thought before it finally arrives to a destination of clarity in a deafening and pronounced "boom!" It's a concrete clarity of a ascribed belief that just seconds before was mixed with the powder of an dusty knowledge and the water of fresh enlightenment. And performs this perfect marriage of old and new and it somehow inherently just precisely snaps into place somewhere deep down in the recesses of your soul. And for the first time in your life....you just know.
If you could follow that fancy paragraph above, it's exactly what happened to me last night. I dreamt a dream unlike any other. It was real in the deepest of senses. Every detail was in HD, every smell, and every everything was real. And that's when mercy, grace, and a cot became real.
So if you can, follow me on this short interesting journey of a dream........"count down 3...2...1...your eyes are feeling droopy...relax........deep breathing"......I'm just messing....scroll down to the next paragraph, Mr/Ms Gullible.
I was in France. I know it because of the infamous tower that protrudes proudly in the sky. I was apart of a group that was studying to take the NCLEX to gain certification and also to pass my upcoming nursing exam. Several of us begin to collaborate on testing ideas, strategies, and where we would being taking our exam. Just as we wrapped up, a group of state officials kicked down the door and detain the "collaborators." We were dragged into separate holding cells. I heard a gunshot and I knew that my friend Steve got it. Then they came to my cell. I distinctly remember they saying, "He got it quick and painless....but we have different plans for you. You shall die slow." I was thrown into a drab, pale blue room with gray carpet, a tiny window, and a brown cot and a wooly blanket.
Months went by without real food except a greasy white gruel which was served under the door occasionally. My body withered. Fat receded while ribs made their presence known. I lay on my cot curled in a fetal position day after day.....wishing that the last thing that I'd ever heard was a gunshot instead of a slow melodic song entitled "killing me softly" or slowly. Long dream short, I remember in my dream that I was going to just give up and will myself to die. I made a cursory glance one more time around my hell hole and I happen to look left and saw magically a mini fridge. I opened it and there was........peppermint coffee creamer. That's all. I drank it. I drank it all. It gave me a glimmer of hope.
Soon my door flung open and the kindest softest woman came in and said "we went to bat for you. You deserved to die but we got you out. You are free and you don't owe us anything." I broke down crying as the constant battle of death was over. I was free.
I slowly opened my eyes....I had awakened. My room was the same. I was in Louisiana and not France. I wasn't facing death but I had felt impending death. I knew exactly how it felt. That immense hopeless feeling that blackholes life.
And right in that moment, I felt God nudge me and say, "And that's what my mercy and grace is like. It frees you. You owe nothing." And right then and there mentally, emotionally, metaphysically, and on every level of being I understood grace and mercy.
We grow up in church at least some of us. We hear words and cliches bantered around and for many they are hollow and meaningless. "Mercy and grace are good things...blah blah blah." But yet it never really has meaning. They are just old stale books just collecting dust but every once in awhile whether it's life or a weird real dream...everything just clicks into place and you go through a journey that shakes you precisely into place and makes real those words.
And they'll become no longer hollow to you but perhaps you'll find yourself with tears rolling hotly down your cheeks at 5:56 AM...and you'll pray, "God thank you so much for your mercy and grace. Thank you for salvation and your extreme love. Thank you for taking my place on that cot...or better yet... that blood stained tree." and God's replies..."that's what my grace and mercy is like. You owe me nothing."
Monday, February 27, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
A Walk I Wished I Had......
I always looked on with admiration upon the elderly in church that are moved deeply to tears in worship and still after countless years trembled under the unction of the spirit. The elderly that knew how to pray with their strained and crackled voice that would reach heaven and shatter the heart of God and caused even Him to move. I always wondered what kind of experience or what did they have that I somehow lacked that kept them going strong.
I had the privilege to conduct my clinicals in a nursing home where there are many characters ranging from the creepy old man to the hoarder that hoards/steals everything in sight to the sweet wonderful ever-forgetful Gam-Gam.
One particular couple caught my attention as they were man and wife. As I enter their room, my eyes wandered around the room and I could see the worn Bible by the nightstand and knew that it had been used a lot. The wife was riddled with cancer and was in severe pain such that she could only pray in a pained garbled-shrieked voice for the pain to end.
The man who was gradually losing cognition and normal thought process would cry out to God in the only way he knew which was an anguished voice pleading with God to heal his wife. Day after day this would ensue. I hated walking down that long hall as the yells reverberated off the walls because it was heartbreaking. My clinicals eventually ended and I never knew what became of that couple.
After graduation and soon employed at this place, I walk cautiously down that same hall hoping not to hear the wretched cries and I knocked on the door and there seated was the same man. My eyes wandered around the room to notice an empty bed where his wife had been. I glanced back over to the man who doesn't say anything. I hand him his meds and he swallows them and I closed the door. I hesitate leaving and I listen for a couple of seconds and I hear this garbled, thick tongued, conversation that was indistinguishable. Pausing for a few minutes, I am able to make out this soft, tender, meaningful prayer......a prayer thanking God for His blessings, for taking his wife to heaven, and there is this wonderful sweet aura that flows from under the door.
Its in this moment that I begin to think that here is a man whose mind is gone, just lost his wife, lives in a nursing home, doesn't get to attend church, in constant pain, and the list goes on and yet past his steep cognitive decline is this deep fiery longing and passion to seek the face of God that is sustained by decades of relationship with God.
It puts me to shame. I want a relationship like that. I want a prayer life like that to if my mind/life is stripped of a normal life that somewhere deep inside the power of the Lord is manifested.
I guess I'm trying to say that life is grand but those things fade. Minds are sharp but those things grow dull. Bodies are strong but those things grow weak.....and saggy. Like the Bible says, its only those things that are done for Him that will stand. I find that very true as the man seated in his chair, stripped of mind but every day a garbled familiar voice reaches the heavens.....and God and him talk.
I had the privilege to conduct my clinicals in a nursing home where there are many characters ranging from the creepy old man to the hoarder that hoards/steals everything in sight to the sweet wonderful ever-forgetful Gam-Gam.
One particular couple caught my attention as they were man and wife. As I enter their room, my eyes wandered around the room and I could see the worn Bible by the nightstand and knew that it had been used a lot. The wife was riddled with cancer and was in severe pain such that she could only pray in a pained garbled-shrieked voice for the pain to end.
The man who was gradually losing cognition and normal thought process would cry out to God in the only way he knew which was an anguished voice pleading with God to heal his wife. Day after day this would ensue. I hated walking down that long hall as the yells reverberated off the walls because it was heartbreaking. My clinicals eventually ended and I never knew what became of that couple.
After graduation and soon employed at this place, I walk cautiously down that same hall hoping not to hear the wretched cries and I knocked on the door and there seated was the same man. My eyes wandered around the room to notice an empty bed where his wife had been. I glanced back over to the man who doesn't say anything. I hand him his meds and he swallows them and I closed the door. I hesitate leaving and I listen for a couple of seconds and I hear this garbled, thick tongued, conversation that was indistinguishable. Pausing for a few minutes, I am able to make out this soft, tender, meaningful prayer......a prayer thanking God for His blessings, for taking his wife to heaven, and there is this wonderful sweet aura that flows from under the door.
Its in this moment that I begin to think that here is a man whose mind is gone, just lost his wife, lives in a nursing home, doesn't get to attend church, in constant pain, and the list goes on and yet past his steep cognitive decline is this deep fiery longing and passion to seek the face of God that is sustained by decades of relationship with God.
It puts me to shame. I want a relationship like that. I want a prayer life like that to if my mind/life is stripped of a normal life that somewhere deep inside the power of the Lord is manifested.
I guess I'm trying to say that life is grand but those things fade. Minds are sharp but those things grow dull. Bodies are strong but those things grow weak.....and saggy. Like the Bible says, its only those things that are done for Him that will stand. I find that very true as the man seated in his chair, stripped of mind but every day a garbled familiar voice reaches the heavens.....and God and him talk.
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