Defining Moments: A Casserole Epiphany

Reflections on Isaiah 43:1, 4 & Psalm 139

Mary was the fourth of five children and often felt invisible.  Sara was the baby, five years younger than Mary.  Sara was doted on.  Everything she did was “darling.”   Charles was the eldest and heir to the family business.  Jane was mother’s favorite, although mother often said that she didn’t have favorites.  Still, it was obvious to everyone, Jane included, that she was it.  Michael, the third child, was more comfortable in his skin then any child had a right to be.  He played to the tune of his very own drummer, always engaged, rarely flustered.  Mary was just eleven months younger than Michael, but they could not have been more different.  Michael was brave.  Mary was timid.  Michael moved forward in the world, always exploring.  Mary held back, unsure.  Michael exuded confidence.  Mary had none.

But now says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you.

The eldest four use to play hide and seek with the neighborhood kids after school.  More times than Mary would like to remember, she was not only never found, she was never sought.  The sun would set and the kids would all have gone home for supper and Mary would still be hiding behind a tree or a shed, waiting to be found or for her name to be called.  It wasn’t that the others were mean or playing a cruel childish trick, Mary was just so quiet that you could easily forget she was there or just as easily fail to notice that she was not there.  The end result was always the same.

I have called you by name, you are mine.

There were plenty of more important moments in Mary’s life, but hide and seek as a child became for her a defining moment.  It was who she had come to believe she was, someone who was neither lost nor found.  Someone easily overlooked.  Someone often forgotten.  It is funny what memories stick and what ones fade to nothing.  And it is sobering to realize how what sticks has the power to shape us for better or for worse.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

Mary did not seem the better or the worse for her memories of hide and seek.  Her life was ordinary and safe, like white toast with butter.  Nothing risked meant nothing lost, but also almost nothing gained.  Mary faded easily into the background at work and at home.  Her colleagues moved quickly by her, up the corporate ladder, making names for themselves along the way.  Her husband lived comfortably in a world that centered around him, his needs, his interests, his friends.  Mary created that world for him and he loved her for that.  Her children, now teenagers, took her for granted, as teenagers are apt to do, expecting from her meals, laundry and cash without accountability.  She never raised her voice, because she had yet to find it.

Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.

One day all that came to an end.  It was silly looking back on it, but it was her watershed disguised as a casserole.  Mary was active in her church’s women’s guild.  Quarterly the guild hosted church suppers.  In theory, they were offered in an effort to draw the whole church family together, to foster fellowship and reinforce the ties that bind all hearts in one accord.  But in reality they were showcases for the fanciest dish and most creative table settings.  Mary always did her duty by these suppers.  She made casseroles and stayed out of the fray … until one night in September.  On that evening, Marsha and Naomi were throwing verbal jabs disguised as compliments in the kitchen as they compared dishes.  Marsha had brought her brown sugar sweet potatoes, topped with miniature marshmallows, lightly browned and served in a speckled blue ceramic dish that had once belonged to her mother.  Naomi brought the very same sweet potato dish, but served in a clear Pyrex dish, nestled in a woven wicker basket with leather handles.  Someone had not checked the sign-up sheet, but who?  This was a huge faux pas and it was clear that the fallout would not be pretty.  Mary, a witness to this crime, quietly dropped off her chicken broccoli and rice casserole and quickly disappeared into the dining hall.  She had yet to rise in the ranks.  She was only welcome to make dishes, not to organize them on serving tables.  That task had to be awarded.

You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

After the grace was said and guests were invited to the buffet spread, Mary noticed that everything was set as it always was with two exceptions.  First of course, there were two sweet potato dishes, served side by side, where there should have only been one, and her casserole was missing.  It wasn’t on the table.  It wasn’t on any table.  On any other night she would have stuffed her disappointment, unwilling to stand up for herself, but that night something snapped.  For reasons only God knows, a switch was thrown and the gates that seemed to have rusted shut over the course of a lifetime of perceived insignificance, burst open.  Out came anger and indignation aimed in all directions.  Perhaps for the first time in her life she walked with her head up, her shoulders back and her chest out.  Pushing past Naomi and Marsha in the kitchen, she grabbed her casserole and brushed back by them straight to the serving tables.  She plopped her casserole on the main table, making extra room, by dumping both sweet potato casseroles, dishes and all, in the garbage.

I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Wonderful are your works; I know that full well.

In that moment, Mary became visible ... to all.  For the first time she was certain of her own worth.   In that moment she was both found and noticed.  In that defining moment, she understood what she had been told since childhood …

… you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.

***Writer’s Note:  Okay, so this is a little tongue and cheek and yet so often the big moments, the epiphanies, the defining moments, come is the midst of the ordinary or even the ridiculous.  And hey, God can find us in the midst of the best and even the worst that church has to offer. 

Angel Unaware ... A True Story

Reflections on Hebrews 13:2 and Amazing Grace

One summer about twenty years ago, Kimberly Borin rode cross-country with fifteen others from Seattle to Atlantic City.  It was a fundraising effort for the American Lung Association.  Her group traveled on average eighty miles a day and made the trip in seven weeks.

On one of those eighty-mile days, Kimberly had fallen behind.  That was unusual for her.  She liked to be out ahead of the pack.  But on that particular day, for some reason, she had chosen to take her time, to slow her pace and enjoy the getting there.  She was traveling through the hills of Idaho, up and down and up and down, truly in the middle of nowhere.  That’s when it happened, or more accurately stopped happening.  Having descended down a fairly steep hill and just beginning to make the ascent up another, her pedals stopped pedaling.  They simply refused to engage.  In a valley between tall hills, Kimberly looked her bike over.  At first she couldn’t find anything wrong.  It all looked as it should, until she noticed the absence of a very small screw missing from her derailleur.

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers …

Having passed a small town at the top of the previous hill, Kimberly walked, bike in hand, up the steep incline and found at the top of that hill, in the center of town, an auto body shop.  The shop owner took one look at the derailleur and told Kimberly that he didn’t have a screw that small.  He suggested that she might find one at the sewing machine shop around the corner.  As they talked, Kimberly explained her mission, how she was riding cross-country with a group raising funds for the American Lung Association and added, as an afterthought, that she was from New Jersey.

As if to make sure he had heard her correctly, the shop owner repeated, “You are from New Jersey?!”  Without waiting for confirmation, he continued, “wait until I tell Fred!”  The owner then walked Kimberly across the street and around the corner to the sewing machine shop.  Having explained her situation, Kimberly was invited inside to search through boxes and boxes of assorted sewing machine parts.  Meanwhile the auto body shop owner left to find Fred.  It took quite awhile, but Kimberly did find a screw small enough to fit the derailleur.  Once the screw was in place and the bike was in working order, she returned to the auto body shop where her team’s van was to pick her up and return her to the group.  As she rounded the corner between shops, a group of locals greeted her as if she was a celebrity.  Word of her presence spread quickly.  “Wait until you meet Fred!” they said to her.

It was beginning to feel a little unsetting.  Here she was a stranger, traveling alone in an unknown town with no backup if things got out of hand, and it was beginning to feel like things were getting out of hand.  At the auto body shop, she waited anxiously for the team van to arrive.  As she waited an old, rusted pickup truck pulled into the shop.  An older man, maybe sixty or so got out with two bags of garden vegetables in his arms.  It was Fred.  He approached Kimberly, put down his bags, and gave her an uninvited hug.  “I am so glad to see you,” he said.  “You are like an angel to me.”

… for by doing that some have entertained angels …

Kimberly was taken aback.  Something was happening here and she was a big part of it, but she didn’t know what it was. 

It seemed like a silly question at this point, but Fred asked her where she was from.  She was sure by now that the whole town knew she was from New Jersey, but it seemed important to repeat it.  She replied, “Flemington, New Jersey.”  At the mention of Flemington, Fred’s gaze turned from expectant and hopeful to amazement and awe.  Tears began to form freely.

“I am from Flemington too!” he replied.  Whatever was happening between them, it was getting bigger.  They actually knew people in common.  And as they talked about their hometown, Fred’s story began to unfold.  He had left New Jersey in the late 70’s because he had done something he was not proud of, something he was ashamed of.  He didn’t say what, but it was clear he didn’t choose to leave.  He felt he had to leave.  He had to find a find place far from New Jersey, where no one would find him and where he could start over.  This was that place, an Idaho town, in the middle of nowhere, population 300.  He had been there ever since.  Over the course of his exile, Fred had been praying for a sign of forgiveness, an assurance that forgiveness was possible for him.  He had asked God to send someone from his hometown, from Flemington, New Jersey.  He had asked God what seemed perhaps not impossible, but certainly highly unlikely.  And here was the answer to his prayer standing right in front of him. 

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.

Kimberly was a stranger in a strange town, on her way to somewhere else.  Nevertheless, she was also the bearer of grace, through no intention of her own, but clearly by the intention of God and the work of the Holy Spirit.  We cannot manufacture epiphanies for one another, but sometimes we deliver them nonetheless.  Sometimes we are angels unaware.  And sometimes a stranger is the answer to our prayers.

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Writer's note:  I was able to reconnect with Kimberly as a result of this blog.  She granted me permission to use her real name and to encourage you all to visit her blogs and website: 

 http://theencouragingworks.blogspot.com/

 http://seeingbeautifully.blogspot.com/

 http://www.theencouragingworks.com/ 

"A Man Named Fred" will be published in a book by SQuire Rushnell and Louise DuArt.  Their book is called, GODWINK LETTERS: A Devotional and will be published by Howard Books/Simon & Schuster in the fall of 2012. 

Bluebonnets

Reflections on Luke 24:8-11

Having found the tomb empty and being told that Jesus had risen, the women share their epiphany with the other disciples:

... returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and all the rest.  Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles.  But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

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In the spring every region has its particular beauty.  I am from the northeast and we glory in the tulips and the hyacinth and then the forsythia, the rhododendron and the azalea.  And that is not even to mention the flowering trees, the dogwoods and the cherry trees.  We are spoiled in the northeast.  There is so much color to our spring.  In other parts of the country spring comes less auspiciously. 

I was in Austin, Texas in April of 2010.  I was attending a conference with friends, two of whom are Texas natives.  I wasn’t expecting much from Texas in April.  What kind of spring could Texas possible have?  I confess, I came with prejudice in my heart.  Texas and I are not on good terms.  I have yet to forgive the state for the disaster that was my sixth grade year.  (That is another story)  So suffice it to say, I was not expecting much from my visit to Austin.  However, I had been told, more than once, that Texas bluebonnets were a sight to see. 

I flew into San Antonio, where my friend, Katheryn, pastors a church.  She picked me up at the airport and we traveled together by minivan to Austin, north on Highway 35.  We had a lot of catching up to do.  There was talk of the glory days of seminary and of course crazy church stuff, friends we had in common and enemies too.  Pastors so rarely get the chance to vent, it was a shame we didn’t have farther to travel.  There was so much to say.  In the middle of one long tale, out of nowhere, Katheryn gasped.  Literally G A S P E D.  I was looking out the passenger side window, away from Katheryn, lost in thought, focused on the trials and tribulations of church service, when Katheryn unexpectedly took in a whole lot of air.  My heart nearly jumped out of my chest.  I was sure that I was no more than a second or two from meeting Jesus face to face and I didn’t want that to happen while I was telling tales out of school.  I snapped my head to the left, in Katheryn’s direction.  She was pointing to her left, out the driver’s side window.  “BLUEBONNETS!” she exclaimed.

Are you kidding me?!  It took a moment before I could make the transition from impending death to wildflowers.  It took more than a moment for my heart rate to drop back to near normal.  In the mean time, before I could respond, I saw them.  Little specks of blue scattered in and among the tall grass on the median strip that separated the northbound and southbound lanes.  Little flowers, not in mass, not bunched together in a blaze of glory, but scattered randomly, haphazardly, maybe two-dozen peaking out in a sea of tall grass.

All I could say was, “oh,” with a tone of relief, rather than awe.  While it was certainly better than death on a Texas highway, and it obviously meant something to Katheryn, to be honest, it was underwhelming.  I have to say, the build up was better than the reality.  I expected a sea of blue outlined in grass, not a sea of grass with specks of blue.  I expected a wildflower patch like you see on the highways in the southeast where dense, purposeful swatches of color are framed by highway on-ramps and exits. 

That is the nature of an epiphany.  It is as individual as our taste in wildflowers.  The Holy Spirit opens one person to a truth, a revelation, through a walk in the woods or the words of a song or a happenstance at work, any of which on any other day or for any other person might convey nothing out of the ordinary and even if that walk or song or happenstance is shared with another, one might have an enormous God-moment, while the other remains unaware and untouched.  Katheryn’s reaction to the beauty she saw in the bluebonnets drew from her a physical and audible reaction, a gasp, as if to say, "If you saw what I just saw, surely you would gasp too."  But I did see what she saw and I was not moved in the same way or even moved at all. 

There is a truth in that simple scenario that speaks to our desire to force our epiphanies on others.  We believe that if we can lead someone to the place of our own revelation, if we can point to what we saw or heard, put words to what we felt or what we had, in a holy moment, come to understand, then others will see or hear or feel or understand it too.  If I was moved, you will be too.  We want to share our epiphanies and we think we can make it happen.  But an epiphany is a work of the Holy Spirit, not a human creation.  It finds us when the time is just right.  It finds us in God’s time.  We cannot manufacture or control it.  It happens to us, not because of us and subsequently we can not make it happen for others. 

We can’t force the Spirit’s hand, just as the Spirit chooses not to force our will.  The Holy Spirit woos individual hearts and minds toward holy truths at God’s pace, a timing synched to our own individual personalities and circumstances.  It may take a lifetime for some to see the beauty of God’s creation on the median of a Texas highway, while others seem ready to oooooh and ahhhhhh at birth.  This, should we grasp it, gives us cause to be patient with those who cannot share our epiphanies, who fail to be impressed with what moves us to the core.  The Holy Spirit isn’t finished with them yet, just as the Spirit isn’t finished with us.  Epiphanies come when we are not looking, not expecting.  They take us by surprise.  They make us gasp.  If a co-worker, acquaintance, family member or beloved friend, cannot share the enormity of your revelation or inspiration, it doesn’t mean that they never will, only that this time is your time not theirs.  This epiphany is for you, a gift from the God who loves you, who knows you, who created you.  Their time will come and perhaps already has with a different message, another insight, something you can’t quite see yet, but perhaps someday you will. 

Our epiphanies are individual affairs.  The truth is, you can lead a person to bluebonnets, but you can’t make them gasp!

Katheryn sent me this picture just the other day.

Apparently a rainy winter has made for a spectacular spring in Texas this year. 

Had I seen this, I may have GASPED!