This Is His Blood

If ever there was a week when a person got beaten up emotionally, this would be the one for me. Can't put my finger on any one thing, just a bunch of things all converging to make it Connie's “Get Beat Up Week.”

First was the hearing which brought home to us all that my friends are really going through divorce—the point at which people begin to lose hope that it could all go away and things could get better. For weeks now every time I go to pray, or connect with God, I feel that pressure behind the eyes that tells you you're on the verge of tears. Friends' pain can be a heavy burden.

Then there was the brochure photography job, which at another time might have been great fun, but coming at my yearly peak of burnout (the school year is coming to a close, but there's a Spring Program yet to do), it's with mixed feelings that I take on anything.

Then two students near and dear to me left in a clash of two cultures. Two of our Korean students skipped out this past week and may not come back. I was in the process of ordering nice pennywhistles for them to take back to Korea, but now they're unexpectedly gone. I invested a great deal of my week trying to explain what I know of Asian culture to the school administrators, but I don't think I made much headway.

And on Friday another of our students left because her mom can't afford private school any more. They live too far away to be able to afford the gasoline it takes to get here. This student is also my daughter's best friend. My daughter, who has never grasped how to make friends, finally got it, and had a good friend—who is gone now.

After school on Friday my kids went swimming with some friends, leaving me cleaning up my classroom and then choosing songs for Sunday. When I got done I took my heaviness down to the office. I knew I needed a good “sliver of time,” I needed to rejuvenate, and I had some time to myself. I asked the office personnel for ideas. The secretary suggested a haircut, but my stylist is busy and doesn't do walk ins. The pastor suggested I go turn on the sound system and play my guitar too loud—that's what he would do. That sounded like the best advice yet, but I amended it by grabbing a penny whistle instead. I also left the sound system off. The vaulted ceiling in there makes it a VERY nice place to whistle. I played for about an hour or so. You know, though, I'm frustrated with my playing right now. Life is too busy and I don't take enough time to practice, so when I DO practice I beat myself up for not being better. Still, a penny whistle played under a vaulted church ceiling is healing, even if played imperfectly. It helped some.

Friday nights I don't set my alarm. I relish sleeping until my body feels like waking up. At this point I had no hope that it would help, but it's my thing, so I didn't set my alarm. But sleep wasn't meant to happen that night. One of my kids was sick all night, and I was up with her, running back and forth with buckets and doing the mom thing.

All of this converged Saturday into one exhausted, burnt out human mother. I ran my healthy child to knitting class, picked around online here and there, and did little else. I did not nap. I don't know why.

Last night, then, I made a deliberate decision. I would not set my alarm to go to church. Roger could run the kids to church. I was playing hookey. I had no crucial part in any song the praise team was doing. They would be fine if I didn't make it.

So I woke up this morning at 6:22, my normal time. I sighed heavily and turned over. I woke up again at 6:30. I sighed and turned over again. I woke up again at 6:40. This time I realized God wasn't letting me off the hook. If I was playing hookey, it would NOT be because I failed to wake up. Almost like He was saying, “You're awake. What are you going to do?”

Well, I felt rested and fine, so I got up and got ready and went in early, just like always, to practice with the team. Oddly, my body was rested but my mind was numb. I told God, “I hope You have a good reason for my being here.”

After practice the pastor approached me. He had this look in his eye that I've come to recognize. You see, I'd almost call him a victim of abuse. For more than 20 years he's been stuck at this church, running scared and fulfilling legalistic demands. He's told me that he asked God over and over to release him from this church and let him go somewhere he could really help people. Because for 20 years God has been giving him ideas for helping to release people from their legalistic bondage and for 20 years people have been shooting down his ideas.

Four years ago I started going to this church—it's about the time he started saying, “I don't care. If God's giving me ideas, I'm going for it.” And our church has been changing into a much more dynamic, fluid place. But you can still see the victimization when he comes up with an idea and he's afraid you're going to shoot it down.

So he had this idea. He said he was really sorry he just came up with it yesterday, and he knew we hadn't had time to prepare, but could we do this dramatic reading of scripture, and if we couldn't that was fine, and.....

Well, his idea was really doable, and I presented it to the first praise team member I ran into and we did this reading and it turned out really well. In fact, it turned out to be a real “God thing,” and, I suppose, gave me a purpose for showing up at church this morning. If nothing else, our pastor has a little more courage to step out next time God gives him an idea and there's no time to plan for it.

So it was communion Sunday. Ah, communion. That last pocket of resistance where legalism and meaningless ritual retains a tight grip. I know communion, or mass, is a ritual fraught with meaning, but as with all ritual it can lose its meaning if you never remind yourself of that meaning. And there's this tight “deacon” hold on communion. I mean it. Once a month our Baptist church puts on a liturgical dance. The same one every month. First all the deacons line up on the front row wearing their best suits. They all kind of glance at each other so they can sit down simultaneously. The pastor says a few words over the elements—first the bread, or mini-crackers, and then they stand up as a unit. They pass a sliver of bread to every person in the church. We wait quietly, examining our lives to ferret out any stray sins that need to be turned over to God. The deacons return to the front. They put down the bread. They sit as a unit. We eat the bread. Then we start over with the wine—or juice, I should say. In Baptist church you use juice.

Now I have to say, once they've passed the bread out to all those people, most of those who are going to examine their lives already have. And believe me, this morning I had plenty of badness to examine—my heart was still playing hooky, even if my body had made it to church. Honestly I did confess as best I could during the bread part. But--we must go through with the ritual a second time for the “juice,” eyes closed, looking like we're examining ourselves again, while all the time we're thinking of sports or lesson plans or of not spilling juice on our clothes. This time I decided to nix the meaningless hypocrisy and open my eyes and just wait, so I did. I was up front with the praise team, and so while I tried to respect peoples' privacy, my eyes wandered around the room.

There was my friend, here at church, even though she was in the midst of divorce—a life crisis that puts my bad week in perspective. And back there on the fifth row back was “O.” with his family. A few weeks ago that family turned up at our church, all with eyes as big as saucers, looking shell-shocked and in pain. It turns out O. recently tried to shoot himself. He survived, but the shock and trauma drove him and his family back to church. And so O. is trying to re-learn the skills that a bullet took from his brain. His speech is slow but good now and his short-term memory is coming back, and he'll probably be getting surgery soon to mend the torn rotator cuff in his shoulder. But O. and his wife are back with God now, and thankful that he survived even as he deals with the aftermath.

And there in the back were my beloved Korean students with their mom, here at church in spite of the sting of their experience, here to find some healing—here together with a larger family that tries our best to transcend cultures. And as I looked at my “juice” in a little cup, I realized that the one thing that pulls us all together in this imperfect building full of imperfect people, besides the need for healing, is a thread of blood. A thread that binds the hurting, the displaced, the tired, the misunderstood. What pulls us all together and heals us is the blood of Christ that we celebrate in a ritual. A ritual that has meaning when we reach out and allow Him to cover our badnesses with His blood.

So when the deacons returned, glanced furtively at one another and sat down as a unit, the pastor said his words over the cup and we all drank together. And this time I think I got it.