I am as guilty as anyone of accusing God unfairly, and making Him into something He is not. I have never accused Him of not listening or not being around--in fact quite the opposite. Because I know He always listens and is omnipresent, that is where I have accused Him most harshly. Ask my wife how many times over the last years I have stated that God is unjust because He listens but never speaks to me, is omnipresent but never does anything to help my situation.. or provide oppurtunity so I can help me help my situation--I don't expect God to clap his hands and fix my (or anyone else's) predicaments.
One of my favourite songs out there is from the Spider-Man 2 movie soundtrack called "Ordinary" (by Train). There is a part in the beginning of the song that goes:
And when the world is on its knees with me it's fine
And when I come to the rescue I get nothing but left behind
Everybody seems to be getting what they need; where's mine?
That last line I would especially sing because I knew God was always listening, but I wouldn't always hear the first line (duh--afterall I would be admitting there that I'm fine when things are going my way) and the second line I should be ashamed of because traditionally I scorn songs that are full of "whiny bitchin" (FFF's "Superman" is a song I loathe for instance--always have). But it was how I felt (and the song in general isn't whiny at all, was my excuse).
The point is, I was struggling with ever-worsening anxiety issues due to...well everything my fool head could come up with. You see I never quite got over my childhood hypochondria, I have been dealing with a very bad debt problem for about six years that has tag teamed with severe unemployment, and the one person that always made these kinds of things all better--my grandmother--is no longer around, PLUS I am always fighting my "Pre-Reformed Martin Luther" complex (someone with this complex believes that God is out to punish them for past transgressions regardless of the assurance of God's forgiveness through repentance and Christ's Death and Resurrection)... ALL a good recipe for disaster.
And so the best place I could direct my frustration and pain is the same place most humans vent these things: Up. And so I did, often and frequently. Little did I know that God had had enough of my crap.
Fast-forward to May 5th & 6th. My wife has been gone to Texas (for almost two weeks now) for her three-month basic training and I am an emotional wreck. But on that weekend I became aware of something: dead silence; the kind of silence you will hear in the vacuum of space. I don't remember a lot about that weekend--even the days that book-end that weekend all run together in my mind. But I know that I touched insanity. I know that I was in that Valley of Death spoken of in Psalm 23. I know that I experienced what Han Solo described as "a big wide-awake nothing" (when he was "frozen" in the carbonite block). For on those days I came to know what life is like where God is silent. And I came to realise in that Silence that the path to those days was of my own making; and I came to realise that God's Voice has always been omnipresent, and most especially in these last five years...
I met Kas in the Summer of 2002. She went to Germany for several weeks. And when she came back I found myself seeking her out. I didn't know why then, but God did. You see, it was just as things in my life were heading into the Valley mentioned earlier. So Kas has been with me through the worst of it. And although I got better for a little while, I still wasn't making much progress and I was still not getting (accepting is probably more accurate) that God was talking and trying to help me through Kas's love and understanding and soft touch of her hands. Letting Kas help me was the "easy way". And when that didn't work (he gave me a solid four years, and then some) He set me on the path that led right through the heart of the Valley of Death.
Now in that part of the Valley there are two paths: you can Die or you can Live. Being a Christian, there is really only one choice since Life is not something we can take from ourselves. And even though you choose to Live, you still want to Die. But God doesn't let you. Evenso--EVEN then--God is still there. You still have this knowledge but you have to really humble yourself--to reconnect your knowledge (your brain) with your acceptance (your heart)--in order to feel Him. And when you do it is like that ray of unexpected sunlight through the grey clouds.
I found His presence on those darkest of days. It came in the form of a memory of an event that had happened not a week before. On that particular Saturday (April 28th) I had just entered what I now know to have been the gates to that dark Valley. It was the first day that I realised that Kas was going to be gone for quite awhile, that I was going to be alone, and that each day was probably going to drag like molassess. The despair I felt on that day was nothing like I was going to feel in the coming days and weeks but it was bad enough ..kinda like after you have recovered from the flu and you think back to that first day you realised that you were going to have what you thought was going to be just a nasty cold. Anyway, on that day I remember wishing that I could hear Kas's voice, if only for a moment.
The phone rang...and there she was. She was there for barely a minute because (unbeknownst to me at the time) she was at the end of a week of hell of her own and a minute was all she had; the phone call was simply so that she could give me her address. But even through the misery I was ignorant of she still managed to squeeze in an "I'm alright" and an "I love you"...and then she was gone.
(At the time of this writing) Kas doesn't know that story, but in that moment God showed His infinite mercy and love. For in that phone call He gave me my own phial of light, like the Light of Elendil that Galadriel gave Frodo before the Fellowship left Lothlorien--a Light to use when all other light ceases to exist on the journey. And on that following weekend, when the Valley of Death choked all other light, I remembered that one minute phone call. I reached for that memory and the Phial of Light was activated. And there was God, standing there, Hand outstretched--He hadn't abandoned me or my wife in this Choking Void; that even though we had still far to travel in that Valley of Thorns and Crags, even though we were separated and could not help each other directly, yet somehow He was with both of us in That Desolate Place.
It doesn't matter that very little sentiment was said in that all-too-brief phone call. It will remain in my heart as the day that I realised that the beautiful voice of my wife is the same calm "low whisper" heard by Elijah.
The Voice of God.
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