The Quiet of God

I awoke early from a bad dream. It was a little after four.

I had been visiting my father... he was going to take us to dinner in Paris.

There was a mess on the kitchen floor and counters: coffee grounds, scraps of food from vegetables and odd little things, which I cleaned up, put in a small trash can.

It was sort of a restaurant, and I went down the short hall to wash my hands. But the Men’s Room was cramped with dining tables, women sitting at them. It was difficult to squeeze through the door, past the tables, around people sitting in chairs. I tried to be polite, make my way through, but people seemed annoyed at my presence.

A little girl was standing on a chair, playing in the sink. I told her I needed to get at the sink and tried gently to push the chair a few inches over. She wavered on the chair, almost losing her balance, and I grabbed her and held her up.

The women started in on me, complaining, and chastising, and yelling.

One woman scolded me that I didn’t know the good that had been generated by the money from the tables put in the Men’s Room.

I awoke.

In waking I awoke Brenda, who went out to look at our fence which we are obsessing a little over, afraid that vandals will deface it again.

Between moments when our bodies requested a visit to our own restroom we spoke about the mess we are in.

Actually, we spoke more about how she felt unsupported in the early years of our marriage, and how that while I have been improving over the last decade, especially the last year, she has felt less and less for me. She told me how she loves this other man and that she is here because she does not wish to shirk her obligations for our children.

We talked for a half hour about my mistakes.

The mood of the dream persisted in my heart.

I told her that I knew we had to deal with these things, that I needed to know them, but that for the past week I have been bombarded by my failures while trying to forget and forgive hers. I told her that, not for the sake of a future together but just for the sake of our own present sanity, we need to have a little fun.

Of course the difficulty in that is the shortage of money and the need to have supervision for our 18 year old son.

So, I am in the Prayer Room of our church. I came here to pray, and found myself looking at the walls, thinking about the time I have spent here. I took pictures of The Lord’s Prayer I did over the past year, and then I took pictures of the rest of the room. I’ll post them on Job’s Tale. But the spirit of prayer, or should I say The Spirit of Prayer, doesn’t seem to be in me this morning. I feel tired and numb and so I sit here writing, tapping at the keys on this laptop.

She loves another.

Why would she stay with me when what I have to offer is work?

And she loves another.

It makes me feel unlovable.

People say nice things about me. So many have visited my blogs and responded so kindly so many times. Could it be that the way I word things, or the way I think about things, is the only thing attractive about me? Could it be that there is something about me in the flesh, as a real person, that people do not like to be near, find grating, abrasive? Could it be that I am unlovable?

I’m listening to beautiful chorale music, spiritually uplifting music.. In the distance I hear the voices of workmen at their tasks in finishing up the rebuilding of our church. The smell of fresh paint is in the air.

And I am alone in this room, hoping to make contact with God, hoping to feel something besides sorrow and loss and frustration and the sense that I am condemned, doomed.

Perhaps it is simply that I am tired. Restless sleep, short hours when I do sleep. A sense that things are falling apart.

Glimmers of hope, small efforts at reconciliation which may be nothing more than her biding time until obligations are met, our conversations are gentler remonstrations instead of shouting, silence in sorrow and loss...

Perhaps it is simply that I am tired. But I feel my strength draining away, my spiritual strength, my prayers broadcast away from my heart into realms beyond these four dimensions and echoing back the ping of a spiritual sonar that something is out there...

But is it the salvation of my marriage or just lessons for me to learn?

My children are almost grown and gone. And perhaps my marriage is as well.

I’m 51 years old. I finally have a very steady career. I have equity in a home. But none in the relationship of the woman I thought I would spend my life with.

I hear people speak of the silence of God. I have felt it now and then, perhaps I feel it now.

But in general I have sensed the Quiet of God. That He is there, and it isn’t that He refuses to speak, is silent, but that I am incapable of listening. That instead of silence it is really the Quiet of God which permeates my world.

If I can just slow down, rest in the grass on the hillside, watch the clouds drift slowly across a deep sky... then I would not feel the need for His voice. I would recognize that I am not a being who needs to have all the control in my life. That I can rest.

I am a servant of the Lord God, Creator of All Things, the Embodiment of Love. I do not need to do manly things all the time. I can simply be. I can rest. I can simply follow.

As a man I like to think of myself as a leader, head of household, guider of my family. But I am not a shepherd really. I am a sheep. I have a shepherd who will guide me. For now, it is simply my job to lie in the grass on the hillside. The shepherd will take care of me.

And what a shepherd He is. The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is the one who holds all the universe together, and He is willing to suffer for me. And not simply the suffering He did when He crept into this world through the body of a young woman, taught the world about love, and then let the world nail him to a piece of wood in mockery of His trade, but the suffering He endures when I continue to reject Him despite all He does for me. The sins I continue to heap upon His Cross.

What a shepherd He is. Willing to go to great lengths to rescue lost sheep. And willing to take on the forces of darkness, powers so much greater than I, to battle for my safety, my return to His home.

What a shepherd He is. While I am a sheep of His flock, a small lamb, He is the Lion of Judah. A predator of great power.

And He chooses to lie down with me!

I need to rest.

Rest in the Quiet of God.