Extraordinary Activity

 I've been wanting to write this for months but wasn't ready to do so. I attend a church whose benediction, spoken at the conclusion of each service, goes like this:

Because we have received the DNA of Jesus and because we want to see His kingdom come, we will be His hands and feet in a broken world. We will be love where there is no love, we will be peace where there is no peace, we will be hope where there is no hope, and we will expect extraordinary God activity at all times, knowing wherever we go, the kingdom goes with us for His fame and glory. Amen.

I have never witnessed such extraordinary activity in my life as I have this year.

For three weeks in January, we fast with intention to develop new habits, whether they're emotional, mental, physical or spiritual. The church seeks to develop a habit of daily, hourlong time with Jesus from six to seven a.m. It's still black outside, and cold (yes, Texas knows cold), and the drive to church takes a good twenty minutes for me. The last thing I want to do is get up in the bleak of morn to drive twenty minutes to church to spend time with Jesus and pray with other when I can't keep my eyes open. But I do it... not daily, of course, but I do go enough that I am content with my effort.

The church isn't open on Friday. They give the staff that morning to sleep. I'd forgotten this. He woke me. I got up, dressed, drove and found that only one other car was in the parking lot, one belonging to my friend, also named Jennifer. She sad her cat had woken her by sitting on her face. She figured she was supposed to get up. We sat in her SUV talking for a good while. I'd asked her why people didn't want to spend time with me. She didn't want to upset me, was wary of answering, but I told her I wanted to know so I could be better with people. She told me then I talk too much.

I wish I could tell you I've always struggled with this. My parents spent a significant amount of money taking me to assorted counselors in my childhood and adolescence. I had so much about which to talk, so many subjects I could broach, so many wounds needing healing. But I was ashamed of them all. Some still weigh heavy in my mind and heart. I couldn't talk. I couldn't let the world know how much I hated myself for the things I'd done, how much I hated my peers and teachers. How much I wanted to die. I couldn't admit any of it.

When I thought I'd found love twenty years ago, when I'd been spinning at the top of a glorious whirlpool and he said things that, like the hand of God, shoved me into its depths where I stayed for years afterward... the things he said made sense. It was the way he said them... on his couch with our legs and arms entwined, my head resting on his shoulder, my hand resting on his heart, my tears leaking onto his shirt... NOT because of what he'd said, but all the ghosts, all the boys I'd known. I heard him. I was on the same page he was. If I could've said so, maybe I would've found a way out of the water and onto the shore, where he'd gone. If I could've said I'm with you... but in that moment, I wasn't there. Somehow I'd found the drain and gone through it into the abyss where the ghosts, all the terrible things boys have said to me up to the time I'd met him, where they hide and lie and wait. And I cannot kill them. I could not tell him where I'd gone or how I'd gotten there. I didn't want his pity. 

I've dated since him... but still I could not communicate. One said I had internal conflicts and reservations, and that pissed me off. What woman doesn't? What man? I wasn't able to communicate with a man until my last relationship bought it six years ago. Oh was I glad to be free of him. I had no trouble whatsoever losing him. His idea of a relationship was emotional and mental abuse. I got enough of that from myself, especially for completely dropping the bar my fathers, uncles and cousins had set, allowing him the opportunity to all but ruin me. Damned if I'd take it from him, too. Damned if I'll do that again.

The point is... like in every other aspect of my character, I've gone from not talking about things that matter to me to talking about ALL the things. I share too much. I've yet to learn to listen. 

I say all this because a few days ago, I'd been talking to yet another Bumbler, a traveling nurse who was in my neck of the woods. I'd notice the traveling bit in his profile but had overlooked where home was for him. I'm too hasty with the swiping sometimes. I know this. We exchanged numbers and began talking. One of the first questions I'd asked was about the traveling and where he was based. He'd said Lubbock. 

Lubbock. The mouthbreather from six years before, his last location known to me was Lubbock. Two thoughts: Oh, this again. SWELL. Also, fuck if I drive to Lubbock. I don't care how good the guy might be. I am NEVER going back to that city. I felt this in my gut. I acknowledge it but didn't act on it. And then there were all the words, the keys shall we say that unlock a woman's defenses. I recognized them, but didn't act on them. We met. More unease. And that same day, I let him go.

Yall. I can't tell you how proud of this I am. I engaged in what had, for the most part, been good conversation. I was more alert to the flags. I saw them waving. But I also didn't want to assume the dude was a jackass just because the rest I've known had been so... and I would've wanted a man to give me the same grace. I gave it. I rescinded it, and I did so in what I thought was a mature and eloquent manner. Of course he didn't respond... just disappeared as all the others have done. Yes, I probably should've heeded the first flag and nipped it in the bud then and there. I'm learning. Still. 

Listening's hard stuff. God's been teaching me, and I'm starting to pay attention.

BUT, while that is, to me gold, these other things, like Jennifer and I both going to church that Friday when it was closed, I have seen miracles.

I've talked about the dental work, and all the ordeals from that. I believe I referenced in that post the goodness I've known through those experiences.

Let me tell you about my favorite, the most extraordinary activity of all.

I severed ties with my previous employer, a tutoring facility, January fifth. They'd cut my hours from full to part-time and reduced them to something like five per week. That would've been about eighty dollars, and with taxes cut I would've seen about sixty-five. It cost me, at the time about sixty bucks to fill up my tank. So I would've been commuting an hour round trip three days a week to earn the money I'd need to spend on gas to get me to work. No thank you. I cleared out my cubicle, most of my belongings there were food, and resigned, effective immediately. On the way home I found a woman dressed in a pink parka with heavy brown fur lining, standing roadside on the edge of Trader Joe's parking lot. I thought, help her. And then I thought I've twenty bucks, and I just quit my job. I passed her. I thought again, you have food, and she needs that twenty bucks more. So I turned into the parking lot, circled back to her and gave her what I had.

Two days later, as I was leaving Target, I saw an elderly man standing at the lot's exit to the intersection. I had ten dollars. I gave it to him.

The next day, Saturday, I got up and went to prayer at the church, I'd dreaded the immature way I'd handled my funds over the past week or so. I needed roughly a thousand dollars to get me through the coming month. That's how irresponsible I'd been. I stood and shared the troubles then sat while others prayed aloud for me. I felt called to turn the gentleman behind me and reach for his hand. When I did, he took it and slipped something inside it. I knew it was cash. I didn't look then to see how much it was. When I left the church, the prayer pastor handed me money she wanted to give to me. And then I had breakfast with another church member, and she hired me, paying me five hundred dollars, to help her with work for the charity she ran.

I tithed, in my own way, thirty dollars after resigning that job, one God had been telling me for weeks to leave.

The man seated behind me blessed me with one hundred dollars--ten times what I'd given the man standing alone. The prayer pastor, a generous woman, blessed me with two hundred--twice what I'd given the woman standing alone. And then another woman blessed me with five hundred. 

I took fifty dollars from the money she'd given me and bought groceries for the church's children's food drive. Exactly fifty dollars worth. When has that ever happened? I used some of the money to update my vehicles registration and inspection, and while there, I asked the manager, a friend of mine for almost three decades, about the food drive going on, and how hardly anyone's donated, and would he be willing to contribute fifty bucks. He said yes and reached in his wallet before I'd finished the question. So with his help, I purchased one hundred dollars of food and took it with me to church the next day.

And while I sat in the 9:45 service, the prayer pastor texted wanting to know if I were there and then, yes, she saw me on live feed. Someone else had given her money to pass onto me. Two hundred more dollars. Twentyfold what I'd spent the day before. 

Yall. It is so easy to look at the people following too closely or sitting too long at the light or constantly getting in your way when you've got ten minutes to grab something for that dinner with friends and think the day is SHIT. It is SO easy.

I dare you to look instead for the extraordinary.