Wednesday Writing Prompt - Saved by the Brit

I've been reading blogs of some very talented women, and I decided to take a deep breath and throw my words out there, too. This is from Princess Nebraska: Tell a story of a time that 1) something that you were looking forward to turned out to be a disappointment or 2) something that you were dreading turned out to be something fantastic.

He was British. Twinkly blue eyes, studying at Cambridge, a camp counselor from the boy’s side. Did I mention his wonderful accent? We first kissed in the backseat of a friend’s car the night we met. We camped out once a week, on our precious nights off, in the tangled woods by the lake between our camps, rarely leaving the muggy, shaded privacy of our little green tent. We talked about everything and reveled in the differences between our cultures, schools, families, childhoods. He wrote me romantic notes on textured blue stationery with a chisel-point fountain pen, always signed “All my love, Michael.”

We left camp, frantic to spend every moment of the next two weeks together before he went back across the ocean. We tiptoed across the creaky floorboards of my parents’ old farmhouse, late at night, to whisper to each other. He spent two weeks with me as I settled back in to my dorm. Our months apart were filled with anguished longing. We didn’t yet have e-mail, and he didn’t like to talk on the phone, so I checked my mailbox anxiously for those blue envelopes. When they came, they would be stuffed full of 20 or 30 tidy pages of writing, the words as endearing as the elegant script. He sent my roommate money to surprise me red roses delivered with a hand-written card on Valentine’s Day. I mailed him pictures of myself wearing his rowing crew sweatshirt. I cried myself to sleep listening to tapes of Pachelbel’s Canon playing behind Mick’s voice, brokenly and beautifully telling me of his love.

Finally, the school year ended and I was ready to leave for my semester abroad. In preparation, I’d mailed an expensive airmail package, scented with perfume, containing champagne glasses. I bought a new outfit, stuffed my backpack full and triple-checked that I had my Eurail pass. My window seat was next to a father and son who didn’t believe in wearing deodorant. As the long flight neared its end, I shimmied past them, let out my breath, and went to the lavatory to make myself beautiful. I looked down in horror. My over-dyed indigo blue skirt had rubbed off all over me. My arms from the elbows down, my legs from the knees up, all were a dusky shade of navy. No amount of soap would change that. I cried, until I realized that he hasn’t seen me for 10 months and what color I am is probably the last thing he will notice.

I could hardly wait to disembark. I took a deep breath and walked out of the passageway, envisioning a passionate embrace like in the movies, looking anxiously for his spiked hair and blue eyes. I don’t see him. I walk, ever more frantically, between the gate and the luggage claim, pushing through the crowd, panicking because I'm in a foreign country and Mick isn't there. How could he not be here?

Suddenly, I see this short little man, – shorter than I remember, especially now that his hair is shaved and no longer spiked – dart past me, pushing a luggage cart. I whip around and grab his shirt. It’s Mick. He pecks me on the cheek, picks up my bag, and heads for the car, shouting over his shoulder that there are two international terminals and he went to the wrong one because the U.S. flights rarely come into this one. He drives the little car recklessly through winding roads to his mum’s house. I don’t think she likes me, but she tries. Mick chastises me for leaving some cooked carrots on my dinner plate, because it was very insulting to his mother. When we go up to his room, he chides me for not packing the champagne flutes better, because they shattered in transit, so he threw them away. He’d never mentioned their pets, and my allergies are extreme. So after a chaste good-night kiss and a few puffs on my inhaler, I still can’t breathe, so I spend the night sleeping in the hard ceramic bathtub, the only spot in the house not infused with cat dander.

I followed him around Europe for a month, submitting to his every whim, financing all the luxurious extras on which I insisted (like a scoop of gelato or Nutella to spread on our bread). I endured conversations in which he insulted our educational system in general and my abilities in particular, compared to the far superior British institutions. I stood meekly behind him as a Greek hotel owner berated him for stealing the drain plug from the sink. Of course, we also walked along the beaches at sunset, where he wrote “I love Kelly” in 3-foot letters in the sand. We took turns reading from the same novel, and shared a pair of headphones to listen to music. After we returned to England, I rode the bus between Oxford and Cambridge on weekends, foregoing the field trips planned by my instructor in favor of college parties and rowing crews and bike rides along the canal. Three months later we parted, another teary goodbye.

Back at school, peering day after day into an empty mailbox, I spun the combination over and over, hoping somehow I just couldn’t see the envelope for the reflection in the small glass window. Finally something was there, but it wasn’t the crisp blue envelope I expected. Instead, I found a flimsy airmail letter, written not in fountain pen but scribbled in ballpoint. No “all my love, Michael” at the end; instead, it is signed “Mick,” and the only other thing I saw before tears obscured my view was the opening line, “I don’t love you anymore, Kelly.”

He never wrote again.

It took months before I could think of him without crying. It took me years to be able to genuinely say I was grateful that he could see what I couldn’t. I needed a man who respected me, who thought of me as an intellectual equal. It sounded glamorous to move to Europe and marry a British Naval officer after he completed his studies in engineering, but would I have ever fit in among a class of people who would always see me as inferior, coarse – a vulgar American? Would I have been happy with an atheist, even with my immature, barely-formed Christian beliefs? Could I have truly married a man who was shorter than I? Would I have ever been able to become the woman I am today, the woman I have come to like, the woman who walks confidently and trusts in her mind and stands behind her choices and gladly gives and receives friendship and laughter and love?

When, out of the blue, Mick Googled me twenty years later, my heart pounded at the sight of his name in my Inbox. But then I gave thanks. Thanks that I didn’t quash down who I really was anymore in order to be liked by a man. Thanks that people out there believe enough in my brain, my words, and my thoughts to hire me. Thanks that God brought me back home and helped me find the church that helped me truly find Him. Thanks that He had given me the life I now have, with an adoring husband and three interesting, all very different kids. Thanks that I was given the opportunity to remember that part of my life and understand that I truly now had all I could ever want. Thanks that he had seen what I couldn’t. Thanks for this man who, not so graciously but nevertheless truly, saved me from that and allowed me to become me.

Waiting

My mom is undergoing chemotherapy. Or, more aptly, she is supposed to be getting chemo this week, but the doctor postponed her treatment by another week. A day or two before each round of therapy, she has to have blood work done to determine whether she is physically able to have the chemo. But this week, her white count was low. White blood cells are the ones that help you fight infection; without them, she is not strong enough to withstand the heavy drugs. She’s had a great attitude all along, but this gets her down like nothing else. She feels well physically and doesn’t want to wait around; she wants to take charge and do something.

It’s frustrating when you have to wait for something, whether with excited anticipation or simply a let’s-get-it-over-with attitude. We’re impatient by nature. So why is it that, when it comes to spiritual matters, we’re willing to sit and wait for that indefinable moment when we decide we’re finally ready to go out and work for God? We’ll wait for years. We wait for signs. I may not be talking to you, but I’m certainly speaking to myself. Pouring over my journals from the last several years, I’ve found there’s a recurring theme: waiting for God to fill me up. Waiting to be properly equipped. Waiting to feel what I believe in my heart. Waiting to understand my purpose. Waiting, waiting, waiting. The other night as I flipped through my Bible, I was stopped by this Scripture:

“For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. Boldly and without hindrance he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Acts 28:30-31)

He didn’t wait. He acted. Even when conditions weren’t ideal. Even when imprisoned and persecuted. He didn’t say that he just wasn’t feeling it, or that he needed to come across the right person, the one to whom he could connect, or that he’d do it if he ever got out of that place. No, he just did it. Jesus, too, went forth. He waited for only one thing: for the Holy Spirit to come upon Him. After His baptism, He went forth and began His ministry.

Why haven’t I? I need to reclaim my natural impatience and get out there. I don’t have doctors or anyone else telling me I can’t. All I need is the Holy Spirit, and it will always make me strong. Even if I’m scared, or tired, or nervous, or uncomfortable, God has already equipped me, and it’s time to move forward.

Looking the part

Man looks at the outward appearance,
but the LORD looks at the heart. ~1 Samuel 16:7 (NIV)

Recently I joined a fitness center. I bought shiny white running shoes and a couple sets of new workout clothes. My membership card hangs on my keychain. Sporty water bottles are half-empty all over my house. My family is exercising and discussing things like whether today is a strength-training day or a cardio day. Pilates tapes line our movie shelves. I’m trying to plan around things like yoga classes and personal trainer appointments. It’s crazy.

The thing is, even though I’m surrounded by all these trappings of fitness, even though I’ve started going to the gym and have learned about nutrition, calories, and stretching, I’m still not physically fit. I’m not an athlete; my muscles aren’t toned; it’s all I can do to get myself there and make myself keep going when it gets hard. Because of the objects around me, it may look like I exercise (if you look at my thighs, you’ll know better), but this is a whole new world to me. I have a trainer who knows what she’s doing, who’s already fit and healthy, but I haven’t yet begun to emulate her or learned how to do it on my own.

It’s a lot like Christianity. We can line our bookshelves with Bibles and books on spiritual growth and tell people we’re praying for them. We can hang Scripture plaques on our walls and listen to Christian music. We can go out to dinner on Sunday, dressed up, so everyone knows we went to church. We can surround ourselves with the paraphernalia of religion, but that doesn’t automatically make us Christians. To develop a closeness with God requires work. Training. Discipline. Focus. Exercise. Time. Especially time. Sure, if we have all the tools around us and experienced people to help us, it’s a lot easier, but—if the truth be told—we don’t need the stuff. We just need to buckle down and get to work. We need to dedicate ourselves to learning about the Lord. We need to flex our spiritual muscles by praying, studying, learning. Soon, it won’t seem like hard work. And before long, you’ll notice that you have become what you looked like you were all along.

Grace is just a phone call away

My grace is sufficient for thee. ~ 2 Corinthians 7:9

The name of my church is Grace & Mercy Ministries. When the person at the phone company entered the name into their system, though, they typed it as “Grace and Merci.” When I first noticed it, I was annoyed by the misspelling. But, after thinking about it one day, I realized the typo is perhaps even more appropriate than the original word would have been.

Grace, as you know, means “unmerited favor.” That means we are given a gift that we do not deserve. We are granted riches and blessings beyond our worth, beyond anything we could possibly earn. One dictionary defines grace as “any benefits His mercy imparts; divine love or pardon; a state of acceptance with God; enjoyment of the divine factor.” When we realize the enormity of this gift, the staggering depths of the love that is behind it, we can become overwhelmed. Words escape us as we bow under the weight of our gratitude. But in simple terms, we feel thankful. We want Him to know we appreciate what He has done for us. The word “merci,” in French, means “thank you.”

So every time I see the name on my Caller ID, I glance up at the heavens with a silent tribute. Thank you, my Lord. Merci.