Call it mystical, call it divine, call it whatever you want, but I’ve seen The Shine.
(or, alternately titled “Tuned In Like A Motherfucker.”)
A few weeks ago I slapped up a particularly angsty post (You: “But which? You do so many of them.” Me: This one here. Smart-ayy. Just try and keep up, alright?” You: “Okay, we digress.” Me: “Oh HELL. Shaddap already. I’m tellin’ a tale, it’s late, and I MUST go to bed soon!” You: “Look, stop freaking out and just say what you came here to say. I’m showing a great deal of bravado in mouthing off to you, but I really quiver in fear, as I know you’ll rip my entrails out without much thought and feed them to the chickens in that farmtown where you live.” Me: “You dig okay, baby.”) that initially started out as a Christmas letter to a pal and ended up being so farging dark that I daren’t send it and cast a pall over his holiday season. (Ross! Newest letter is clocking in at four pages, and is still a work in progress! I know, I suck!)
So, lucky you and you and you, too!…I posted it here. In it I spoke of emotional investment and frustration and a feeling of impotence, but there was also an eensy kernel of hope-slash-lightness there:
“All this is such a contrast to how I felt just last night — upon exiting my car under the hazy glow of streetlights, I paused a moment to just breathe. I turned my face up to the rain, its tiny droplets cold and soothing on my cheekbones, my forehead, and felt like a still, small part of something immense and important. I closed my eyes there in the dark and felt love; for a brief moment all the ‘busy’ flew away from me and I knew peace.“Oh, to live in the midst of that feeling all the time…”
Welp, I learned something about that today, but I’ll get back to that here in a minute.
At the end of that post, a reader that whose name you might recognize wrote something that hung with me, so I put a call out to ole Bakey (the ever-impressive and long-contained Bakelite Lung…that is the coolest nick ever) to contact me via e-mail. Here is the bit that Bakey wrote that snagged my attentions and moved me to make this request a bit after he did so:
“I only know you a little teensy bit but I think you are practicing a Calling.”
Just like that: ‘Calling’, with a cappilull cee. Thus lending it importance and more weight, you see.
Oddly enough, a gentleman that knows nothing about me had approached me not long before that and said, “God told me to tell you that are to be a voice for those that don’t really have one.” There were other things, more detailed things, but for now we’ll just leave it at that, as it was the meat of the matter. Threw me for a loop, because you see, I had been praying about purpose and potential and promise and a whole host of heavy-assed ‘p’ words not fervently, but consistently and from the still, deep place in my heart that I sometimes hide (quite to my own detriment) from even myself.
So quite suddenly and stunningly, we had a theme. A short-running one, but a theme nonetheless.
Now me, I’m prone to all sorts of means of self-destruction, not the least of which is my super-duper, patented Flee The Scene To Avoid A Psychotic Breaktm. Thus my compulsions to do all sorts of neat things like drive too fast and take drugs and travel extensively. You could say that I’ve grown up a lot in the last half-dozen years by virtue of the fact that I’ve lived in the same state (and even county!) for that length of time. I may have forced myself to do it for whatever reason, may have bitched and squirmed, but I have byGod done it. Oh yeah, there’s the also-painful dismissal of cocaine thing, too.
So my urge is to bolt emotionally, to detach myself from any such foolish notions, but instead I quite remarkably said (internally, of course), “Okay, Father. Let’s rock&roll.” and sat quietly –uncharacteristically patient– and waited. I’d never done that before, never just given over. But I’m getting ahead of myself, the words free-falling and going all wompus in my effort to tell all the details.
See, I’m one of those people marked from birth. Call me crazy if you will, drive the stake in the ground and start gathering up the kindling; I don’t care anymore. I’ve been running from the time I came out squalling from between my mother’s thighs. She tells me and everybody who’ll take note that I held my own head up, looked around angrily and screamed bloody murder and defiance. For a long time I mildly and amusedly dismissed this as Southern Momma Myth, but old Doctor Kirkman confirmed this for me unequivocally, and that man was a shit liar (just like me) and quit trying early on for lack of skill (just like me).
I’ve known since I was little that I’m different. Not really any more special than the next guy, but different. Set aside for a particular task that aims to help or guide a few (okay, a lot) of people. Marked. I’ve always, always known this, always felt God’s tug on my heart, His presence in my life, always been both comforted and –in a strange, smallish way– tortured by this. Not the mere notion of this, oh no, but the thing itself. All big, powerful things (and by that, I mean love) are like this. If you don’t know that fact by now, then you’re not fucking learning fast enough, kid.
So now I’m in this holding pattern, after having gone all these years saying, “Okay God, what is it you want me to do?” while He was saying, “You say yes to my Call, girl (AHHhahaha, callgirl), and I will show you. Boy, howdy, will I ever SHOW you!” This said not like a threat, but delivered with a warm and broad smile. HOWEVER, I have always been afraid to just give over: To just give over absolute control to anyone or anything is a BIG SCARY THING to a girl who came out of the womb with head up, eyes open and screaming hell no from minute go. But finally something in me clicked and I was all, “Hey, I incorporate fearlessness into my life as a rule. Why am I letting fear overtake me when I know that if I follow the plan, then I’m slated to win?” God don’t let you lose. That’s not the stuff He is made of. It’s a shame that more churches don’t teach that, don’t state it that cleanly. There’d be a lot fewer sad, horrified people in the world if the word was taught as it was given: With love and kind regard for us, the most prized of all God’s creatures.
(And you know what? I know all the naysayers are gonna come knocking and that’s okay, too. We are all scared and confused, no matter how much information we have, no matter what our belief system. It’s okay for you to believe as you do and it’s okay for me to believe as I do and we can still be buddies, we can still share a biscuit and a pull off the jug together without going all ‘Enemy Mine’ on one another. God loves me, He loves you; why would you want to shoot down someone offering love sans judgement? It’s not my place to judge, man. It’s my role to learn and to grow. If I’m impeding your growth (whatever it may be) by shaking a finger and hollering ‘NONONONO!’ then I’m just damning myself. I’ve had it done to me and patently don’t like it; I avoid doing it to others at all costs.)
(Please know, however, that if you come around here acting all chest-beaty and bullshitty to me, I won’t simply turn the other cheek fifteen times and go, “Oh (s)he’s just a vile sinner and cannot help it.” For shitsakes, you are an adult, and when someone greets you warmly, you don’t spit on their lapels and hop around waiting for a fight while not really, truly expecting one, if you know what I mean. Christians are supposed to forgive, yes, but how can you offer up forgiveness if none is asked of you? Even God Hisownself requires the askin’, and I’m certainly no better than him in style and grace. You know, for the record and all.)
Okay, so back around to the fact that I couldn’t bring myself to respond to BL’s e-mail of ’so, whatchoo need, girl?’ just then. Sort of an eedle throwback to the whole Flee The Scene To Avoid A Psychotic Breaktm thing. But it’s all been sort of coalescing, and this is my response, sort of, all of this, and the part that I’m telling now. There were sets of circumstances that brought me in contact with three people today, just in the normal course of my (achingly busy) day. One I’d never, ever met before but made an almost-compulsive gesture to (I’ll write more on this later). One I know in passing, sort of a quasi-acquaintence-through-bidness/potential Rilly Good Friend. One I know quite well, and we have a relationship of really deep love and respect (you know that friend, the one where you go all, “HEY! Look who’s coming up the walk, HOORAY!” when you see them). I interacted briefly with all these people in what seemed to be innocuous ways, dong my thang, grooving my groove, just being. You know. Just, well…being.
Phenomenally, each and every one of them called me up (in the exact order we had interacted, I might add) to say something along these lines:
“WOW. How great it was that we spoke today. What you had to say was like a sign.
“There are things that happen really unexpectedly, and there’s no way you can chalk them up to coincidence.
“I needed to see you today; somehow you addressed exactly what was going on with me. It was wonderful!”
One of them delivered it their message to me with excitement, one with exhausted relief and one through joyful tears.
One I would have called chance. Two I might have dubbed as coincidence. At three, however, I have to give props. It’s like I’m getting little progress reports, since I’m new at this Truly Listening thing. God is taking time out of having to deal with all the fucked-up, grody shit that’s going on to tell me that my patience and submission are indubitably rewarded and to remind me that I’m part of His plan in what may be life-changing ways even when I’m not really even paying attention.
I’m learning, I think I just may be beginning to evolve, I’m joyful and –as always– I’m so very blessed. That last one, make no mistake, I’ve never, ever lost sight of.
“Be still,” is what CNL told me a few days ago, both over the phone and in the comments here. What I hesitated to tell her is that I have been being still, just simply waiting. Not straining an ear, not struggling to listen like an ADD kid in math class as I once foolishly did, but with a still heart and mind. It’s translated itself thusly: I’ve been living my life with much more energy (on even less sleep, remarkably), a peaceful, fluid inside replacing the jaggedy one I’ve carried for so long. Just by virtue of saying that one little phrase that I’ve been batting away for far too many years: “Okay, Father. Let’s rock&roll.”
Boy, the payoff thus far has been rich, and I’m only just getting started.
23 worked it out »