When the Gospel does the clinging...

Mowed today.  I actually had to mow twice because the grass is so very thick and high!  Boy, Firewood Man's fertilizer must be wicked stuff.  Mind you, the yard still has spots that are a tad bare and one area in front around the side has more weeds than grass.  So, I am working on that. Or rather Firewood Man is helping me work on that.  All those years.  All those years in Alexandria trying to grow grass in that wretched Virginia clay and finally, finally I have grass. Real grass.  GREEN grass.

For the first time, Amos trotted beside me as I mowed in the back yard.  Up and down.  Back and forth.  He made me chuckle the whole time.  When I moved to the front yard, he sat at the fence and howled at me.  In fact, he ran between the gate on one side of the house to the fence on the other, trying to keep me in his sight.  When I brought the lawnmower back to the garage, Amos jumped up wildly, repeatedly until I caught him.  When I did, he washed my face and then buried his face in my neck, relaxing his whole body against me.  I was sort of loathe to put him down.  After edging the front, accompanied by more howling, this time Amos just put his front paws on my legs, looked up at me, and waited.  In the strangest way, his silent plea was much harder to resist than the wild leaping.  I carried him back to the steps and sat with him while winding up the cord.  Oh, how my puppy dog loves me!

It was a hard day, made harder by test results I was not expecting.  When I saw the doctor's number come up on my phone, though, I knew.  I just knew.  So, I go back on Friday morning, endure another difficult test, and then wait.  Right now, I am seeing three doctors on three matters and have yet to find someone to address my vision.  Or...really...the burns I have on my back from a thermacare wrap.  I suppose I am just hoping that the latter goes away.

To say that I am weary of my wretched body, with these small battles that combine to make a war it seems I will never be able to win, is a gross understatement.  Oh, am I weary.

But it would not be a fair accounting of my day were I fail to mention that Sandra helped me swallow the unexpected bad news and Fred read me more John.  Not only that, he offered to continue once we are done with this Gospel.  SIGH.   Hearing the Living Word just...stills...me.  So, I wasn't alone in facing such unexpected news.  Sandra, too, rather gently suggested I not vent my upsettedness on the grass right way, but wait until it was cooler.  Sage advice.  I waited and the weather really did cool off rather significantly.  I waited and was safer mowing. I waited and ended up savoring my time puttering in the soil...and holding my puppy dog.

So much is swirling about in my head, so much fear and so many scattered pieces I am trying to gather together.  So many thoughts.  So many questions.  And this truly odd mixture of feeling as if I am experiencing life for the very first time and yet still swallowed by an anguish that will never end...no matter how much I want it to, no matter how hard I work at finding rest.

Were I to read back in my blog to when I first found the pure doctrine, I know that time and time and time again what I would find is a person who could not dare to believe any of the for yous of the sweet, sweet Gospel could possibly be for one like her.  You will not find that now.  In large part, such a deep and abiding change is why I believe so strongly in the power of hearing the Living Word, the healing that lies in the Lord's Supper. The small certitude I now hold did not come about because of me, because of my strength or will or wisdom.  Truly, I am walking, talking, breathing evidence of that faith is received.

Yet what lies within me still is an autonomic structure that is so utterly damaged, weak, skewed. The key word in that admission is autonomic.  Yes, the havoc dysautonomia is wreaking on my body has that word oft in my mind, but it still is an apt word, a word with a finality that terrifies me.  I cannot really explain.  Truly, even if I cold, just now I am too afraid to try and speak about this.  But it remains nonetheless.

Sandra said something today.  I was bewailing my misery and fervently longing for my foe to just...back off! I mean, I am nothing.  Nobody.  I matter not in the Kingdom of God here on earth.  He should be applying his rather implacable, relentless wiles to someone who threatens his kingdom.  Surely I do not.  Sandra pointed out that through all the...crap...that has been happening, I have only clung to the Gospel all the harder. Surely that offends my foe. I opened my lips to deny her observation.  I mean, we can all agree I am the weakest, wimpiest example of a Christian possible.  Period.  However, what I knew she would most certainly support me in saying is:  the truth is that it is the Gospel clinging so fiercely, Jesus refusing to have one of His sheep snatched from His hand.

You know, just the other day when Fred read John 10 to me, I tried to tell him how such a thing confuses me, since we can lose our faith.  How could Jesus say that no one could snatch His sheep, but that they could walk away.  Even writing this makes no sense, my confusion that is.  I mean, would not free will be the answer?  But that aside, what flitted through my mind as Sandra was saying that I was clinging all the harder was the voice of Jesus speaking those Words to me.  This day, John 10 filled my life, my existence, my experience.

For all the autonomic responses that fell hope for me, there is one that brings hope.  Read to me.  Read to me the Living Word.  Most especially practically anything in my beloved Psalter, but anything really. Read to me the Living Word and that deep, unbidden response is stillness, peace, rest.  As I have said before...even when such is not necessarily what I want at the time...seemingly almost against my will, it happens.  It is an autonomic response.  As I have written before, Luther teaches in the Large Catechism that the Living Word is and can do all that God is and does.  Such truth resonates so very strongly within me.  For I experience such.  The Living Word clings to me, fiercely, even when I am too broken and weary to find the strength to grip anything at all.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. ~John 1:1-5


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!