LTDL--The Schoolbus of Hard and Soft Knocks

When I miss a bus or train I can’t get over it. It ruins my day. The bus or train is usually leaving when I pull up to the stop, especially if it’s an unplanned or new trip. That way you have to wait the maximum time for the next one. Curses. I usually can’t do anything constructive during that time. I just fume. My thoughts immediately turn to how much God does or doesn’t care.
This goes way back. There’re two lessons that took me a long time to learn as a Christian: the importance of going to church and of praying. The relationship of one of those to public transportation is a defining event.
When I was in college, I used to have a prayer time every evening. Every night I was there in that triangle-shaped room on one of the padded pews or kneeling, talking with God, maybe one other person in the room, if that. Then for some crazy reason I decided I didn’t have to do that. Problem was I didn’t decide to replace it with prayer at a different time. I felt some imminent dark night of the soul coming during those times, a feeling that something was going to go wrong, was even going wrong at present, really wrong. Without prayer, I started walking away from God without knowing it. If you are close enough in your relationship to God, a lack of it for one day doesn’t feel like anything wrong, like a frog in a pot of water coming up to a boil. Day leads on to day, then before you know it, you are completely out of touch with him; and then if something bad happens, and it will, you may turn away further because you have no contact anyway and you’ll feel like he did it to you. This is what happened to me. I had been out of prayer for several months, and I was feeling an unrelated anxiety. One day before church I was overcome with anger about it, a depth and intensity of anger that was such that it even scared me. Where is God? It scared me so much that I simultaneously ran away from it and God—who hadn’t been taking care of me in allowing those anxious feelings anyway. I found myself in a depression and avoiding all stress of any kind, fearing that any pressure would make me explode or implode or both.
When I was backslidden away from God, I didn’t know that I could come back if I wanted to, didn’t know I could just turn and do the things I used to do. No, I thought I had to be warmed by some feeling before I could go back or be taken back to him. Then one day I lamented to my friend that I missed Christian fellowship—the particular word that Christians use to describe the relationship and participation you have with people who love you genuinely and are in on something you are. He asked me if I wanted to pray. We did and it meant recommitment to me, even though I don’t remember if it was actually offered in the prayer. We went to Taco Bell, me struggling with my recent decision the whole way. It was a decision I struggled with for a long time, even while serving God again. I had become comfortable in living apart from him. I was like the Prodigal son who went back to Dad for food and managed to make up true repentance as he went along and even after he got his belly full.
My first day back with the Lord I missed a bus and had to wait 45 minutes for the next one. How could God let that happen? I wondered. It was a real test. I don’t know if I have matured beyond that sort of thinking, but I guess I have, and in my best moments I can let it not even bother me.
It was fun in its own way being away from the Lord. I could expirement in life. That’s what I missed in that life for a long time. I liked not being guided but rather by learning by going where I had to go, to paraphrase Roethke. Now wisdom guides me more, not necessarily having to try everything out to see if it’s good or bad. I have to make myself experiment now. That may be sad in a way. It is a loss. My brother, who used to do speed and would stay up for days working on his car and tripping, misses that sometimes too. But I have peace now. I still have feelings that are still diffcult to deal with and that scare me even, but I have learned how to deal with them and have peace and comfort inside. My life is productive and organized again. I read, I write, I acquire knowledge. Before I was a Christian, I didn’t do those things, and certainly not for the right reasons.
In the desert Jesus was tempted to do magic and worship Satan and test God’s ability to rescue him from knowingly foolish actions. He responded to the desire to do those in a variety of ways: relying on a several strategies instead of taking a short cut to getting the one thing that isn’t right for you at the time, relying on the fact that one should not expect God’s help in unwise adventures, and a conscious decision to worship God in spite of external and internal voices because it’s known to be right.
I’m not sure how those temptations related to my situation as a backslidden Christian—no I am sure. But you’re in my living room as a guest and so are others….