Kirkepiscatoid

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. ²In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴And you know the way to the place where I am going."

You know, one of the things rural folks seem to do more than city folks is "attend funerals and wakes." I probably was taken to my first visitation at the funeral home when I was three or four years old. In rural America, it seems to be just part of "being neighborly." Often times you only knew the deceased as a co-worker, "relative of a friend," or just someone you saw often because you did business with them. So the first part of John 14, the "Consolatory Discourse", becomes one of those chunks of Bible verses that you sort of learn to ignore, like the 23rd Psalm, when you have been to a bunch of funerals.

If I were to sit down and create in my mind the stereotypical "rural Missouri funeral home funeral conducted by evangelical Christians," this set of verses would be in it, as would some older lady singing "In the Garden" in a screechy, shrill voice. I can see the Conway Twitty-haired preacher with the sweaty forehead going, "In my Father's house are many mansions..." (because, after all, they would be doing it in the KJV, which we know is the only "real" Bible. Sigh.)

So let's just say I have a real knack for ignoring this paragraph of Scripture.

As I work my way through the book of John, though, I find that I see "old things with new eyes." This morning, verse 4 jumped out at me and went, "BOO!"

"And you know the way to the place where I am going."

Whoa! I know already? REALLY? You SURE?

Now, I have to tell you something about myself. For some reason which isn't entirely explained by my past, my "default wound" is abandonment. It wasn't like I was locked in the closet or anything as a child, or was physically abandoned or anything like that. Maybe it is just a piling up of all the things I had in my life where it felt I was constantly "fending for myself." Or that I was surrounded with so many people who did not deal with their issues in a healthy fashion that I just knew they could not be depended upon. Or the fact that sometimes, even as a child, surrounded by chronological adults, that I felt like I was "the only adult in the room." Or all of the above. Or maybe none of the above.

But the "abandonment switch" can certainly be turned on inside of me at a moment's notice, and can get flipped on accidentally, just like how I can bump my dome light control in the truck with my knee and not realize I accidentally turned it on. It can make weird things happen. It can turn my normal "abnormal need for solitude" into "Nobody gives a damn about me. I wish I were really truly loved." That shift is never gradual; it's almost immediate, like flipping a switch, but the resolution of that switch having been flipped often takes days for me to work through, and sometimes is not without an episode or two of misplaced anger. Or, as my late grandmother used to say when I was younger, "When you get your bowels in an uproar, it's almost like you have to pick a fight with someone to get over it." It's truly a pattern that, over the years, I have had to struggle with to make any progress at all.

I am starting to realize that this pattern is a form of unhealthy self-punishment. Something happens that makes me feel unloved or unworthy. So I feed that feeling by getting into it with someone close to me, who gets fed up with me, and will withdraw because they don't want to deal with me, and then I say, "SEE! You abandoned me, asshole!"

Well, as I read this paragraph in John, that I so often ignore, I realize that Jesus is trying to tell the disciples that no matter what happens, no matter what it might feel like at the time, he is not abandoning them. He's saying in verse 3, "I'm coming to get you. I really am. Honest, I will. But you have to believe it, even when it feels like I've left you behind."

But then He tells them "But you have to realize I left you a trail of breadcrumbs anyway. Really, you know how to get there yourself, you don't even have to wait for me if you don't want to."

I thought about something that sort of came up in a phone conversation I was having several months back with our dear Elizabeth. I was talking to her about something on a semi-pastoral level, and as we discussed it, she said, "You know, if you listen to yourself long enough, you're your own best spiritual director. You actually know how to think through it. It's the letting go of it that is the hard part." She was right. It's my job to "diagnose." I'm pretty accurate at "diagnosis." But implementing the plan is the hard part.

As I read this set of verses this morning. I realized what part of it is. Many of the things I have to resolve in my life's problems often include the realization that I must "abandon my own will" and listen to the will of God, and actually obey it when I do manage to hear it. But if the message does not hit me with that "ton of bricks" feeling, I generally am not ready to abandon my own will. Since I sooooo dislike "abandonment", I will resist it in myself, even when it is for a good cause!

(Hmmm. Consequently, the Holy Spirit seems to take great delight in hitting me with that ton of bricks, or whapping me upside the head with a holy 2x4. Grrrr.)

But in reading these verses that I so often ignore, I have come to a recognition that I am never abandoned, and if I get a little impatient that "God isn't showing up fast enough to suit me," the thing to do is sit still and quietly scan for breadcrumbs in my "field of prayer vision." Then my job is simply to find it, go to it, eat it, taste it, and sit still and scan for the next one. I'm guessing these breadcrumbs are a lot like morel mushrooms. You have to sit still long enough to see them emerge from their natural camouflage. Well, hey. I enjoy hunting morel mushrooms, so I think I can do this!