I have green walls!  After 20 months, I was finally allowed to paint the walls in my office.  Granted, the process involved moving much furniture and frantic rolling to get two coats painted and everything put back in just one day.  Briefly, when considering the project, I fantasized about calling Pastor and asking if he could find someone to help me, but I figured it would cause less drama if I did the work myself.  So, I have three green walls (my boss insisted on having a different color on the wall she faces while sitting in my office).  Green front door, green phone, green car, green computer, and now green walls.  SIGH.  HAPPINESS.  Personally, between my green walls and my stack of Lutheran study materials on the corner of my desk, I have no excuse not to go to work "cheerfully" as proscribed by Luther!

All that work meant I did not leave the office until 9:15.  But I have green walls!  Between spending hours on my feet during my thank-you dinner last night and painting and moving furniture all day, I am in agony.  Each passing hour has deepened the stiffness and pain.  But I have green walls!  My beloved buttercup had to drag me around the neighborhood loop so that he could have his walk.  But...I have green walls!

I spent the first part of my "evening" recording the songs I know from the bible that I sang for Pizza Man and his family last night and typing up words for them.  I also recorded Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence and The Church's One Foundation for them because they wanted them.  However, for the other hymns we sang...I gained permission from Pastor to pass on his recordings!  Pizza Man's lovely bride is so very excited about the hymns she will be learning for she has longed to do so.  Somewhere she either read or heard that singing hymns is rather like dancing.  If you do not know the steps, you spent too much time focused on mechanics and thus miss the true heart of the experience.  If you are struggling to read the notes and sing the words, then the richness of hymnody is lost.  She has wanted to learn hymns well enough so that she could concentrate on their truths and the act of praise, not merely struggle through melodies.  So, God is multiplying Pastor's gift to me amongst more of his flock.

But I leapt ahead.  Pizza Man's bride took me to another exam/ test this morning.  One necessary that I willingly do for its importance, but one during which I cry and before and aft generally lose my lunch in the parking lot so distressed am I.  This time, having been enlightened by Pastor on how much better it is facing such things with another instead of alone, I asked his wife if she would go with me thinking that as a nurse she would not mind the intimacy of the experience, but scheduling would not allow her to be there.  I thought about asking Pizza Man's bride, but balked at first since I wanted someone to actually go into the appointment with me.  I thought she would be uncomfortable or not wish to do so.  I was wrong.

While there were tears and fears, there was also much talk of hymns, the Book of Concord, a bit of Bonhoeffer, and even prayer.  And there was no spewing of stomach contents.  What is so lovely about her is that when she suggested that we pray and I whimpered that I struggle to pray for myself, she immediately proffered the Lord's Prayer.  No chastisement about how I should be praying for myself or how silly it is for me to feel as I do or anything else.  Just acceptance and a solution that would gain us both.

The technician there is quite kind.  Twice I've had her, each time her response to my tears was to tell me that she was being paid for the whole day so if it took the whole day, she was fine with that.  Last year I typed her name into my phone, and this year I asked for her.  That meant having to wait longer, but my "escort" did not mind.  The first year with the technician, she asked me what was hardest for me, and I blurted out the tiny shirt/gown.  So, she promptly disappeared and came back with a gown for an obese person, one that I could wrap around me twice.  Funny, I had not thought about how much God has cared for me through this woman.  Twice now she has remembered me; twice more she has showered me with kindness and patience. 

The technician had news of her own:  she just got married!  She remembered that last year she spent the time talking about not having dated and wondering if marriage would happen and caught me up on her life.  So, she and Pizza Man's wife and I sort of spent some time in girl chat, a strange sound to fill the room during the procedure. 

You know, I am really, truly, and deeply bothered by something Pastor said on Saturday and...well...am trying to hide, having remained home from church and bible study and am currently trying to figure out the least offensive way to cancel on Saturday so as not to lose future hymns and teaching...but then why have pastoral care for someone who is fleeing?  But I keep finding people expecting me to be there next Sunday, wanting me to bring something, bringing something to me...I cannot really say why I absented myself, for, to them, the reason would be the very thing that should have me running straight to church and plunking myself down in the first pew.  Sometimes I think they simply do not understand how wretched I am.  Sometimes I think it is I who does not understand. 

I want to crawl in a hole and wail for I cannot deny Pastor's teaching.  He is right. What I was taught, what I believed is wrong.  But I need him to be the one in the wrong.  I need that old teaching to be right.  I need it so.  I want to crawl in a hole and wail and yet had such a blessed evening last night that I knew joy in my sorrow...and I don't mean my exuberant-arrogant-endzone-victory-dance before Pizza Man and his bride when I learned that I GOT THE ANSWER RIGHT!  I want to crawl in a hole and wail and yet am showered in God's mercy this morning in a truly difficult time.  I want to crawl in a hole and wail and yet have a call with a woman from church this afternoon who I do not know but who managed to slip in those words...but you are forgiven, Myrtle...not knowing my distress.  I want to crawl in a hole and wail and yet that same woman asked if I might be interested in taking some church work off her hands, should Pastor agree, something that would fill some of my long hours on the couch and help me feel as if I really did belong.  I want to crawl in a hole and wail and yet...

After sending off the hymns and bible songs tonight, I hunkered down with Walther...

In the fifth evening lecture, Walther quotes Gerhard in examining just why it is that there should be a right dividing of law and Gospel (II Timothy 2:15):  "In the third place, commingling Law and Gospel necessarily produces confusion of consciences, because there is no true, reliable, and abiding comfort for consciences that have been alarmed and terrified if the gracious promises of the Gospel are falsified."  Commingling Law and Gospel bring about unrest of conscience.  No matter how comforting the preaching is that people hear, it is of no help to them if there is a sting in it.  The honey of the Gospel may at first taste good, but if a sting of the Law goes with it, everything is spoiled.  My conscience cannot come to rest if I cannot say:  Nevertheless, according to His grace, God will receive me."  If the preacher says to me:  "Come, for all things are now ready--provided you do this or that," I am lost.  For in that case I must ask myself, "Have I done as God desires?" and I shall find no hope. (41).

SIGH.  My field of faith is riddled with the weeds of commingling....

Earlier, Walther notes rather simply:  God has created us without our cooperation, and He wants to save us the same way. (40)

Tell me, Myrtle, having learned that the earth is indeed round, why do you still live as if it is flat?