I've been in Michigan for the past three days in anticipation of my brother's college graduation this weekend. My plane landed on Monday at 6:02 pm EST and it all began...actually, it began on the plane.
A baby a few rows behind me was crying. Not just crying but wailing and I wasn't havin' it. I sat there and pressed my face against the window and closed my eyes..."Daddy, please comfort that child. Please just do whatever you have to do to make her stop crying. Daddy, I'll pray the entire flight if that's what it'll take too get you to make her stop. We can talk this entire time if she just stops." I got out my journal and began to write and simultaneously the baby's shrieks ceased. "Shoot. Well, okay. You've got me now. Since I said we could talk, I've got some things to say..." That was the first time in a long time that I prayed undistracted,
My life has seen its fair share of bumps on the road in the past four months and I'm not really one to march into conflict head on. In fact, I have a tendency to run away from the tools that can help me. In this case, it was God. There was a dramatic shift. I went to daily mass for the past two years but in the past few months, there have been weeks when I found myself needing to be coerced into attending Sunday mass. I filled an entire journal (about 100 pages, front and back) in five weeks this fall but have only written about 30 pages in the past 10 weeks. Clearly, things got shaken up.
Being here this week, though, has reminded me of what used to be. You see, I've only been at my parents' house for about 12 weeks out of the last 2 years...104 weeks and I've been here. Because I go to school 700 miles away, I only make it home around the holidays when the dorms are shut down. I'm not complaining; I'm just offering perspective. This short period of time in Michigan means that I do not see my friends from "childhood" very often. When I do come home, I get to see a select few people for just a short period of time. Often these visits make or break my view of the trip.
That was a lot of background.
What I want to say is that this week, I've gotten a wake up call. Monday night I spent with my friend Claudia who I hadn't seen since August. It was clear that we hadn't seen each other or talked in awhile. As we conversed over dinner and continued at her apartment, it became clear to me that she had no idea where I was at. She knew about some of the bumps in the road but seemed to ignore the possibility that they had actually affected me. I'm not the same person I was when we last saw each other but she definitely expected me to be.
I don't really know how to decide if that's a good thing or not.
Maybe a little bit of both.
The next afternoon, I had lunch with Kim, a woman who used to work for my parents. She could tell that I had changed, that life had changed me. She listened and understood. Kim took me as I was. Then she took my hands and very directly told me to stop running. She reminded me of what my relationship with God used to look like and honestly told me that she knew that I knew running away wasn't going to get me anywhere and she knew that I wanted to turn around.
These aren't the only two. Since Monday evening, easily half a dozen people/situations have directed me to where I know I should be.
It's like God's been knocking at my door for the past two or three weeks and I acknowledged that He was there and I acknowledged my desire to open the door but I didn't. This week, I opened the door and let God explain why He's been knocking.
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