Sometimes I think back to my senior year of college, beginning Spring semester. That was a dark dark time. A valley I didn't even walk through... I crawled and then collapsed and some how or other, The Lord carried me out... with the help of my friends.
At the time, I lived on the top floor of a house on South Lucas street, just off of Burlington. I lived up there by myself, the room across the hall from mine sat empty and abandoned, which was a partial representation of my heart at the time. If the room had been gutted and ripped apart, burned up, mangled, destroyed with almost nothing left... that would be a more accurate representation.
But every day as I climbed the stairs to my room, passed the empty room and to my own room.. which was large and open and looked some like a prison since I had a mattress on the floor in the corner and averaged 58F degrees during the heat of the day... (It was January after all) , I would think about how alone and abandoned I felt.
I spent many a night, curled up under 10 blankets on my floor with a space heater set to kick on if the room dropped below 55F degrees (that would turn on within seconds of turning off), crying and clinging to a promise in the scripture of "Those who sow in tears will reap a harvest of joy."
I remember asking the Lord often, "Please show me my heart and why it still hurts so much. What have I not surrendered yet?"
And the Lord would bring before my eyes the image of Himself sitting at a work bench with my dismantled heart spread out before Him, adjusting the tiniest gears, adding the tiniest details, tweaking the the most intricate workings and taking the most care and concern that every detail, part, piece, gear, facet, unit, and element was polished and replaced, rebuilt, tested, working... and loved.
It helped me to understand why the Lord's love hurts sometimes. Because sometimes you gotta do a lot of dismantling in order to love down to the tiniest details. And The Lord loves you too much to think that the tiniest places aren't important. If He made you to feel loved by someone greeting you on the street, than that's an important piece of who you are and he might just dismantle big things to make sure that part of you is squeaky clean and working well and experiencing love the way it was meant to.
And you may think, "Forget about feeling loved by being greeted on the street, I just lost someone that I loved! I didn't need to feel loved by that, I loved my human!"
But it is in those times of anguish that someone stopping along the sidewalk to ask after your life touches you the most.. because you *need* it. You need it, and you cling to it.
It is when you lose the big stuff that every little tiny bit left matters and feels and is more vivid than ever before. And you don't forget that when the Lord puts the big stuff back... You can still feel loved by the little things.
Which is what brings me back to those days when I would pick myself up off the floor in the morning and pray for the strength just for the day. And someone would greet me by name and ask how i was.
Hearing my name said was a big deal... well, it always has been, since 1) No else has my name and so I know that they meant ME specifically when they said it. 2) I'm the middle child of a big family... need I say more?
If you want a really easy way to make me feel loved, Simply saying "Fern" goes a long way. If you wanna go way further... a nickname really tickles the bottom of my heart. Being called "Fernie" or "Ferniture" or "Fernie Face" or "Fernald" or "Fernicles". .... all those things... :) Those are life words.
Which brings me to my less than half-hearted quest for community in this desolate land of corn and beans. If we had to go back to the empty room comparison, this part of Iowa seems to hold as many promises of friends for Fern as that room held warm inviting company.... none what so ever.
Which is why I resigned forever many weeks ago from hoping for church, community, worship, fellowship or friends. I have a church attendance streak going of 2 weeks in a row.. Please be impressed.
A week ago I was encouraged to attended "Young Adults Bible Study", and although my heart was less than thrilled at the idea, I figured "it couldn't hurt to try". Haha.... Who ever came up with that phrase should be shot in the foot.
Because sometimes it does hurt to try. When you show up and are at least 10 years younger than everyone and not a single one of them besides the hosts acknowledge that you exist.... that's the worst. I love the hosts. They are special companions from my journeys overseas... but to everyone else... I don't know that my presence was even noticed.
But, I gave it a shot. I give myself points for trying... for everyone who knows me, walking into a new room with new people is probably one of the farthest things from comfortable in my book. I did it, I suffered through it, and I won't repeat it.
Last night after building a new cattle yard for the cows, I was just headed back to the house to clean up for an attempt at joining a different Bible study when it was discovered that one of the baby cows was not in its pen. Thinking I'd forego having to try to put myself in a new group (seriously the bane of my existence) we hunted for the darn thing in the tall weeds and dirt and bugs and found it just before 6:30, when said new Bible study was going to start.
Covered in bug bites, sweat, weed pollen and who knows whatever else, I went back in the house where my mom told me to hurry and get ready because it would still be good to go. It's my mom's Bible study after all... people in her age group and older. People with grandkids and great-grand kids. Led by the pastor. These are the adults I've known my whole life and have always known of me. But it still didn't seem like anything I would ever feel apart of so I wasn't thrilled at trying this one either.
But they knew my name. And they called me by my name when offering sweet tea or coffee. They asked me specifically if I was interested in the topic they suggested for their semester of study and asked my thoughts on how my generation viewed the topic. When study was over, the pastor thanked me for coming and another lady asked where I'm at in my life.
Not that I feel like I belong there, exactly, but they know my name. Which is a big deal for me since I've felt, for the past few months, that I only exist any more to my family and a handful of friends who've kept up with me since I moved.
I don't feel like all other humans have abandoned or forgotten me. More just that I have slipped into an anonymous hole where most of my existence has lapsed into a fond memory. Which, makes perfect sense, since I have physical access to no one
I'm not bitter, I'm not depressed. Just a plant, The Lord had planted by streams of water that the Lord has transplanted into a dessert so as to teach my roots to grow through the hard soil and be deeper and stronger and find the water sources deep under the surface.
I'm learning about the Lord.
I used to come back and visit and have critical thoughts in my mind about how people in this part of the world have no real worries in life and have prayer requests for their aunt's sister's husband's father's sore throat. I'd hear sermons about the trials of this world and the persecution they might face for their faith and be a little bitter since they didn't have to walk to class and pass people with big angry signs claiming you were going to hell for listening to rap music and yelling at you about how God hates you for going to Iowa.
They didn't have to sit in classes where religion was brought up and people bonded over hating the Christians who hated the gays. And when it came to the gay rights movement, I always disliked how critical these small town people were of homosexuals as I felt I could sympathize with them a little over having to live your life kind of in a closet, hoping that no one would ask anything that would reveal too much about your real identity... because "Christians hate gay people" and anyone who can't tolerate homosexuality is the sickest, most heartless, despicable human being on the face of the planet.
Mostly, I hated to hear them say that being a Christian was hard because as far as I was concerned, they hadn't the faintest idea of what being in the world but not of it was like.
Which is partly why I haven't been especially seeking out of any sort of fellowship... I just didn't expect that I'd be able to relate to any body about anything since I've been in a very different place the last several years.
I still don't expect that I will find any body who would understand where I've been the last several years. But I'm learning that God has a special purpose for these believers in the middle of nowhere Iowa whose trials consist of the weather, being late to work, and surgeries.
What I hadn't really realized, is that the Lord has a collection of prayer warriors that he has stashed away from the worst of the worst, who worry so much about what might be going on in the outside world that they bring it before the Lord, often. Who else has time to worry about that stuff?
But their prayers are genuine and filled with faith. They search for hope and expect it. They worry over their grandkids and their great grand kids and what will become of them. And they pray.
Gracious, the Lord has done MIRACLES in my heart via the prayers of my grandparents. I know for a FACT that had my great grand parents and grandparents not offered me up in their prayers every day, I would not have been so well tethered to God when the storms rolled in.
Prayers are rather important, I've realized. Going to God on behalf of another is a real big deal... absolutely crucial when someone is in a valley. Like I said, I never made any effort to crawl out of my valley.. I had not the strength for it. But my friends prayed over me and for me and spent days and nights speaking words of encouragement into my heart.
I remember sitting at bonfires under the stars and thinking the words of the Psalm, "He brought me out into a spacious place. He rescued me because he delighted in me"
As I spend my days driving past corn field after bean field after corn field after farm, I am reminded of those same words.
Not that I feel like I needed to be rescued at the time of my uprooting, but the Lord knows my heart better than me. Who knows the path of my feet but the Lord. And I know that I am here because He delights in me.
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