What if...?

I'm a different person than I was six months ago.

I don't know of any other half-year in my life that has changed my outlook, my passions, my spiritual center more than this one has. A chance comment in March turned into a lunch, a plan, study, and a weekly commitment. Along the way, there have been joys and challenges, frustrations and discoveries. And I'm not sure where this journey will lead.

I knew writing would re-open some history, which it has. I still agonize over words and ideas, and become obsessive. I stress myself out over things said and unsaid.

Writing for worship takes hours of study time, reflection and feedback from my mentor. It's like an intense Bible study, a creative writing exercise and a technical writing project blended together. The funny thing is, it seems to have this unusual way of changing me, far more than I've impacted it.

Every week, some new insight fills me with wonder. It would have made sense to be filled with revelations in the first weeks, but the inspiration seems to grow stronger, week to week. The past two epiphanies have left me awed.

Along the way, I've joined a handbell ensemble, started to practice the keyboard again, and remembered that I have a gift for taking photos. I've committed to learning the multimedia system for worship and have been nominated for church council.

And I've lost my alienation with celebrating the anniversary of the Christmas event, year in and year out. I've gained a new perspective on heaven and hell, the second coming and the desire to change my corner of this world in the meantime. I've gained a connection between my daily life and my spiritual life that never existed, a blurring of the lines that makes me wonder where one part of my life ends and another one begins.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened had God succeeded in that little tug at my heart at 16, when several people around me nudged me toward ministry: pastoral ministry or another call. And I turned my back, went to school and wrote professionally for 15 years. Had I gone another direction, would I have always longed for the writing opportunity I missed? Is this God's way of redirecting, refocusing, repurposing me, some 35 years later?

I will never know. God is patient and finds ways to use us for good, wherever we are, at the moment in life when we turn around and look. God's love has no limit.

No stones here

I read something I wish I could wish away. Someone I know is in trouble.

I wish my first thoughts were as gentle and Christ-like as I hoped they would be in this situation. But they weren't. Here they are, raw and uncensored:

"How could you? You've ruined everything. You had everything going for you, and you destroyed it."

It took me most of a day to get that out of my head. I have a long way to go on my Christian walk.

Finally, the part of me that I'm nurturing came out: "pray for him. pray for his family. pray for the other people affected by this. pray that good will come out of this. because when God's involved, everything works for good."

I'm working my way up to expressing that to him. Not sure what I'm going to say, or maybe I'm just going to express it in a note. Something encouraging. Something that wraps him in grace, because he is a man of God, human and frail, but first a child of our heavenly father.

"We all are broken-heartened at the recent news. But the good news is that we are all broken. Period. We've all made bad choices that we've regretted and hurt other people. There are no stones here. We're praying for you and your family. We love you. I hope the people in your life surround you with love and forgiveness."