love's reflection

I was getting ready for work and my mind was wondering. I thought about some of the choices I’d made recently, and how badly I’d handle chances to be good.

I thought about this guy I knew and what an ass his recent choices had made him appear to be.

And this story popped into my head.

There was a prince of a guy riding through the countryside. His long, Pantene-like hair flowing through the breeze, he looked around at the country that would so be his soon. The donkey he was riding brayed as the road narrowed, and the prince, aggravated, beat his ride to make the animal move faster.

He was a jerk, but he could be. He was a God-chosen prince. He was beautiful, rich, and owned farther than the eye could see of a peaceful, beautiful land… so why not?

Anyway, the ass was riding an ass. And as he passed a tree, those luscious locks tangled themselves up in a tree. The donkey turned around to the prince. He brayed to himself at seeing the prince, and (in my head, at least) said, “Wow, man. You really are an ass! You could have moved slower, and not gotten your hair tangled. You could have gone a different way, and avoided the tree altogether. But you had to go this way, this fast.”

The donkey kept laughing, leaving the prince hanging, angry and humiliated.

I laugh because I so relate to that tale… and it’s not usually until I am hanging by my hair, in a place where what I thought I knew turns into something unfamiliar and scary that I’ll admit I have a very carefully constructed view of power; that my power is solely based on perspective.

Last week, I heard another story. A friend went to the funhouse at the state fair last fall. He was there, chasing kids and making funny faces in the warped mirrors, when a little girl obviously done up for a pageant came in with her family.

Her mom lead her to the mirror that makes you look fat, and the little girl started to tear up. The mom lead the little girl to the super-thin mirror, and the little girl started crying. The mom led her to the third mirror with the warped S-shaped reflection, and the girl just broke down.

Another female family member saw all of this, and brought a little compact mirror out of her purse. She offered it to the little girl, and she stopped crying.

What do the two stories have in common? Perspective and uncertainty.

We need to know who we are. We have to know what truth is, and we have to be able to trust it.

We have to choose to trust it.

When my mom collapsed, I freaked out. I didn’t know what to do or who to trust. It didn’t matter what the tests said or didn’t, because they didn’t fix anything. They all said she should be fine, and they charged us for the lack of information.

As far as I was concerned, and have been, and probably will be for a while, hospitals are where people I love go to die.

And there are those that would tell me this is an issue with a spiritual answer, and I agree with them, as that’s something I’ve said before. When my mom wasn’t hooked up to tubes looking like every breath cost her.

But truth is truth, no matter the angle or perspective. Otherwise, it’s not truth.

So, believing that, what do I do?

There’s a verse from a letter written by Paul, that talks about letting your requests be known to God, and for years (most of my life, really) people have read that to mean “whatever your issue is, pray about it.” Or worse, if you have a problem, it’s because you haven’t prayed about it.

But what if that’s not what that means at all?

What if that verse is really saying, you are hurt by this thing you care clinging to which is not God… so why is that? What is it about that ______ (job, person, house, responsibility) that offers you a fuller, more completely safe place than God?

What if it’s just a subtle request for you to turn the Lover of your soul first?

One of my mom’s favorite rants is that if the Church were doing its job, there wouldn’t be a need for counselors or jails or food stamps. There’d be less government watch-dogging, and more effective good in the world.

The first step in that is for each and every one of us to admit that we just don’t trust God.

It can start with me: I don’t trust God. I don’t believe that He’ll use me ever again. I honestly believe that someday, He’ll wake up and realize how screwed up I am and how rough around the edges and horrid and messy… and He’ll leave.

Or worse yet, He’ll stay and resent me for being the way I am, wait for me to go off on Him (again), and He’ll just stop responding.

See? Here’s a secret: I’m really a prince with an ego issue… and part of me will always be that little girl, seeing herself as warbled and warped, not really sure what I look like to other people and scared that what I feel isn’t really true.

But… here’s a bigger secret, one I really can’t deal with sometimes: God knows already. He loves me anyway.