Delusions

I sent the art gallery owner an album of photographs of my art work. I felt before lugging all my work over to a meeting with her, it would be wise to have her select the pieces she was most interested in. Then I set about daydreaming of how to spend the millions I would make when my undiscovered talent was finally discovered. I thought of how she would open that album, and within seconds would be on the phone, telling me my work was not only to take center stage in the gallery but she wanted to set up a one woman show now, today, and begin printing flyers.
"How does The Future of Art is Here in Charlotte sound for a title?" she asked me in my happy musings.
My phone was blinking, alerting me to a new email.
I smugly scrolled to my gmail, and opened the letter from the gallery. I could almost hear the applause.

"Thankyou for sharing your album," she wrote,"While your work has a great deal of creativity and energy, it is not quite at the maturity level I am seeking for our gallery......"  There was more. She still wanted to meet to discuss greeting card art for which she felt I was suited, and she would be willing to display, and she could suggest how to improve my fine art portfolio. I will take her up on that....later. With my visit to help Amy and my son's wedding looming, I don't have the time or energy for another project. Frankly, all my energy was siphoning off into keeping a stiff upper lip.
"Please don't be discouraged..." she wrote, as though that would somehow pick my chin up off the floor.

Her gallery did display some truly gorgeous art. I shouldn't be ashamed that I lack that level of "maturity"....whatever that means. But what really distresses me is that I was deluded enough to think I did. Am I like one of those early entrants in American Idol tryouts, that everyone laughs at, and they put on TV because no one can imagine how anyone that sings like that could even begin to think they could be the next American Idol? How many other areas of my life am I faking myself out in that way?  Will the next gmail be from one of my kids:
"Dear Mom, while you get an A for effort, you lack the maturity to be a convincing and effective mother. However, you seem to have a talent for raising dogs. Perhaps you should focus your energies in that direction instead."
And most disturbing, a gmail from the toilet:
"Dear homekeeper, while I applaud your efforts at approximating cleanliness, you lack the maturity to do a truly thorough job and I would suggest you apply your energies towards a low skilled job that would pay for a house cleaner that knows what she is doing."

But I am not discouraged. Discouragement looks like someone bawling her eyes out while the dog creeps from his bed and lays his silky chin on her lap and lets her run tear stained fingers through his ruff......

Arvo and I went on a walk in the excruciating heat on a treelined sidewalk while Asherel was in youth group. The sun tried valiantly to melt us but it couldn't quite vaporize us through all the shadows cast by the overhanging limbs. Light and dark danced around us.  That's just how it is sometimes. Life is filled with lightness and darkness. Exaltation and Disappointment. Sickness and healing. Reality and Delusion. The pastor at the church had mentioned that in heaven there will be no darkness. It will all be light. And all the fears that assail us in the middle of the dark night will be forever gone.  It occurred to me, does that mean no more sleep in heaven? Because frankly, I really look forward to going to bed each night, curling up with a good book, and drifting off to a land of fantasy....one not created by my own delusions of grandeur.

John 12:
³⁵ Then Jesus told them, “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going. ³⁶ Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.”

Looking for Light

I was closing Asherel's door early this morning and glanced in the empty boy's room. Despite it being 6 years since Anders left and now Matt's been away to college for four, I always feel a momentary sob wanting to erupt when I walk in that room. My sister says I need medication, my boys feel I need a "life", and I feel a piece of my body is missing. It is not a pervasive, constant, or overwhelming grief.... it is just a little self-indulgent twinge. But this morning as I glanced in, I saw a little red light dancing in the air, near the curtains. It was like a little red Tinkerbell. I walked into the empty room. Mind you, I use the word "empty" as in empty of sons. It is hardly empty of "stuff" as it is currently housing 5 seven foot puppets. All those lifeless figures loomed in the darkness as I crept in, looking for the little light.

It must be some electronic device that was left on, I thought. So I gingerly tiptoed among the puppet giants searching. Hmmmm. Strange. Nothing plugged in over there.... no little red light. Perhaps it was something out the window, behind the blinds. I pull them aside to look out. Nothing there that might cause a little red light. The giant puppets all leer at me with their unseeing eyes and unfeeling hands. Lifeless mouths gape open, refusing to tell me the source of that light. Maybe it reflected off something in the hallway. I look at every wall, every corner. There is nothing that might have cast a little red light into their room.

So, I conclude, it must be God. This would drive my son nuts as he is brilliant and can't stand that anything I don't understand I instantly label God. Like gravity. I mean we all know what gravity feels like and everyone knows what you are talking about when you mention gravity....
but it is one of those things we feel so certain of, so basically convinced we understand.... and yet it is one of the baffling mysteries of the universe. Newton thought he understood and explained it perfectly while eating his apple pie, and then Einstein comes along with his theory of relativity and blows Newton's musings about gravity out of the water. But even Einstein couldn't explain some puzzling basics... like every other force on earth attracts and repels... why does gravity only attract? Of all the immensely powerful fundamental forces of the universe, gravity is inexplicably weak. And how did it become so fine tuned... if just a little weaker, or a little stronger, it would not exist! All life needs gravity to survive- just think of the rubber legged astronauts that have been in space very long and need to be carried off the spaceships. Quantum mechanics and relativity, the two best working theories we have so far seem to be at odds regarding gravity.

So I just conclude, Gravity is God. Now I am not saying that is all God is, but it is part of Him. The Bible supports me on this one.

"My own hand laid the foundations of the earth,
and my right hand spread out the heavens;
when I summon them,
they all stand up together." Isaiah 48:13

and Colossians 1:16-17
¹⁶For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. ¹⁷He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Long before anyone had labeled or had a notion of gravity, or even of the gravitational forces of the universe, these simple Bible figures talked about how in God, the very universe holds together.

So back to that little red light in the boys' empty room. I think God was reminding me that it is not as empty as I feel. I think He was reminding me that He binds us all together, as He binds the universe together, and I may not see them but His hand is on them as solidly as it is on me and gravity never repels, it only pulls us closer....We all are being drawn back to Him.

When The Path Is Lit

I broke my toe once stumbling in the darkness. And all the horrid nightmares I used to have always came in the middle of deep black night.
I am a morning person. I love the light of day. The shroud of night spooks me. I don't like walking where I can't see where to place my feet. I like clear paths, well -lit passageways, goals that may be distant but are still discernible before falling off the edge of the earth.

Yet, most of the time the paths in life are not at all like that. Most of the time I look back on a life that is more like the circuitous wanderings of the Israelites in the desert. The goals I thought I was heading for kept shifting and transforming, or like toppled vases, just shattering. I don't know if I am particularly blind or if everyone's life feels that way.

My second son Matt was the one who as a child bounced off the walls. He never stopped moving and he was always asking for something more, something bigger, something tastier.... and yet, from age 11, Matt wanted to be a lawyer someday. He began reading law books in middle school, and studying about different cases. His exuberant bouncy nature ping-ponged from one activity to the next, but his goal of law-school remained steadfast. He was a typical second child, fun-loving and social and not as committed to hard work as I would have liked, but he was always smart and his native intelligence got him into a very good college. His first semester was a disaster, however, as he chose some very high level classes and bumped up against the shocking demands of reading and writing assignments 4,000 times more than he had ever faced, as well as laundry, getting up early, and tempting diversions everywhere he looked. Not only did it look like his dream of law school was probably over at the end of that horrible first semester, but maybe his dream of graduating. Health issues were multiplying and he was chronically sick and tired, and now battling just to pass, let alone have a GPA that would get him into law school.

It really would have been very easy to give up, or to change his goal. But he didn't. He fought back to the path he had hacked out for himself, and stumbled along, often in darkness. I know there were periods of great despair. Each semester, his grades got better and better. He took the LSAT, the law school entrance exam, while coming down with yet another illness, but did well. Despite his last semester being sick with mono, and very hard classes, he got straight A's. He applied to several law schools. Last night he called to tell me he had gotten his first law school acceptance letter. He is still waiting on the others, but he was thrilled. It is a top 30 school, and not his first choice, but he would happily go there. I had not realized I'd been holding my breath for the past ten years for my son the dreamer, til I let it out with that phone call.

Night inevitably follows day. There are periods of darkness no matter how hard we try to hang on to the sun. Sometimes I just take it by faith that God is there, lighting the way. I have to just huddle against my fear, and know that morning is coming. And when it does, it is always most beautiful when the sun is blazing after a long period of gloom.

The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them
along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light.
Exodus 13:21