The Biggest Thing
On Saturday, after a very cool, rainy Friday we took the kids to a Trunk or Treat Event. Our Church had a spot there passing out candy and offering games for the kids. My husband, even though he had to at work at four o’clock in the morning Sunday, went with us that evening. It ended up being a really nice evening. My big boys helped with the games and my daughter and youngest boy got way too much candy.
Prior, the day had been cool and overcast and we all just felt the physical effects of the dampness, the sluggishness. Sleepy eyed we wondered if we’d even go to the event as planned as it continued to drizzle outside wetting the pavement and shining up the sidewalk.
It felt like a good day for sweatpants and college football and pizza conveniently brought to my door without effort whatsoever on my part. I wanted to snuggle up in that middle part of my couch that I call the magical nook, wherein I could hibernate for days. The cold drizzle beaded on the windows and with no real schedule for the day we mostly lazed about. It was glorious.
These feelings were shared by all six of us seemingly but one. My daughter had planned her third coordinated Halloween costume with her baby brother. They’ve been the Mandolorian and Baby Yoda, Hank the Cowdog and Drover.
This year, they were Sonic the Hedgehog and Knuckles the Echidna from movie and video game fame. She was the only one of us full of energy excitement about the coming evening’s activities. From the moment she rolled out of bed she asked with increasing frequency how much time it was until we would leave.
Somewhere in the late afternoon I went to the driveway to get something out of the van and a full-on Fall breeze tickled my face, cool and refreshing, like ice cream somehow and sweet. The puffy grey clouds parted just so and through them shone a soft, buttery sunshine gently and subtly.
The drive to Trunk or Treat was similar visually. The rain clouds towered in the distance, dark but sleepy and the sunset held its smooth, yellow glow just at the horizon below them. Its shine, like an understated but unmistakable jewel now highlighted the changing of the trees into golds and dark, tired greens almost ready to brown and rust.
We don’t do a plum, auburn, golden leafed show of Fall color in Texas in October but God is undeniably here knitting together a different kind of beauty.
I was reminded once again about a question that has been rattling around in my distracted, tired brain for a long time. What if I didn’t have the foundation of God’s Word and Truth when I looked at such a scene? What if I wasn’t rooted in the Truth of Jesus and His Grace, Mercy and His will for me? What if I didn’t have that lens to look through when I was met with unmatched beauty, overwhelming joy, peace, pain or loss?
I texted my sister a couple weeks ago a picture of a hymn we were singing in church. The song is “You Never Mentioned Him to Me”, James W. Gaines 1929. I hadn’t heard the song in a long time and while I definitely get the point I texted the photo with the caption, “Our Sunday guilt trip in hymn form.”
One of the verses goes, “When in the better land before the bar we stand, How deeply grieved our souls will be; if any lost one there should cry in deep despair, ‘You never mentioned Him to me.’” You get it, it’s about what would happen if we never shared the Gospel.
Now, I texted in jest, if that seems like heathen, pagan behavior to you, then that’s ok. You’re not my sister. If you do find that remotely funny, let’s have some coffee and pie sometime, okay?
It did bolster the same thoughts that I had been thinking for weeks. What if someone didn’t have the lens of Christ, His Mercy, God’s love in which to view life?
What if you sat with your toddler son at bedtime after a very stressful day when you were overwrought and somewhat miserable? What if as you tried to get him to sleep, you ran your fingers through his silky soft strawberry blonde hair? What if the very idea that God is a God who knows not only how many soft, silky hairs are on your precious son’s head but also yours, as it hangs heavy at the end of a stressful day, when you feel like you are absolutely empty? I cannot imagine how hopeless and empty my life would be.
Two weekends ago we had a terrible stomach bug. It was awful. I’m a nurse, normally I like to minimize the run of the mill family illness, but we dropped like vomitous flies into a few days of virulent bodily fluids, dirty laundry and body aches.
What if, when I was called to take care of my family while I too fell ill, didn’t know God’s plan and will and role for me as mother and wife? Would I persevere? Would I collapse in a pile of putrid self-pity and wait for someone else to come along and take care of things?
Ya’ll, I’ll shoot straight with you. I had a serious battle with some bitterness during some of those few days. I tangled with some self-pity and some resentment that husbands always seem to get sicker than the wives do. I angry prayed my way through some of that. I don’t want to paint the picture like I didn’t. What if I didn’t have God to pray to? What if I had no real idea of what was good and right as is written out for me in the Bible? What if I had no expectation for my prayers and calls out in the night to be heard?
The last five years have been amazing but also really, difficult. I’ll save that long saga of a story for another blog, or novel, perhaps.
It has felt that every time I feel like I’m on top, that I’m on the right path and I feel strong and confident I get knocked in the dirt. What if I didn’t know that God was fighting for me? What if I didn’t know that those times I get knocked to the dirt are likely Satan trying to convince me to quit following God’s plan. What if in those private, quiet moments when I’m so full of doubt and frustration and darkness I didn’t have my God to seek out for peace, calm, Hope? What if I not only did I not have Faith but didn’t believe any of this God and Bible stuff was true?
What a terrible, half-lived, shallow breathed existence that would be.
So, yeah, it is a guilt trip song but it’s one worth yielding to. What if I just never mentioned it?
I’m mentioning it now. Do you know God? Can I introduce you? How can I help?
I am a very, thoroughly imperfect person. This past week, after getting “knocked to the dirt” again with some back issues that have left me wobbly legged and with a lot of questions I had a God to pray to, a Holy Spirit that Intercedes for me and God-breathed scripture to follow and to seek answers. I am a walking, stressed out, frazzled, wife, mother of four that’s currently shaped like a potato; a wobbly one but, I’ll tell you the truth. Following God is everything, without Him nothing ever really makes total sense. You’re doing the LITE version of the life app without Him.
(Oh gosh, Jesus metaphors! Jesus has taken care of the PAID version, you have no DEBT or subscription fees and you can live this life with all the perks and special access to joy and contentment with the full version of the life app. Sorry, I had to. I’m a dork. I could keep going but I won’t.)
We need Him. I do, you do. That’s all there is to it. Well, there’s more, but that’s the start of the only, really important truth, the one that should come first.
