God

I’ve spent hours each day combing the pink swirls of my brain and the harp strings of my heart for the right thing to write this week.

Three essays filed into the vault, and I’m here to meet you empty handed, underdressed, and unusually comforted by my own quiet.

I don’t share those with you today.

I don’t feel comfortable dressing this letter up in figurative language, memories, ribbons, and ruffles.

I don’t feel qualified to say much about God because I know so little about him. I’ve never seen his face. Have you?

Today, I come to you humble and plain, stripped of any grand ensemble to say a few simple things:

1.

God is everything.

God is my load bearer.

God is my grounding.

God is my peace.

God is my comforter, weaver, and guide.

And God is the weight.

God is the challenger.

God is the father teaching me how to drive the dented, red Saturn in the empty parking lot.

God is footing the bill when I crash it into the gate.

2.

Suffering is not just inevitable but designed. I take comfort in knowing I’m in the refiner’s fire. I think of a woman in labor. If she anxiously braces against the pain, it heightens. If she relaxes her muscles and slows her breath, it eases up.

In moments of suffering, I seek to give in to the refiner’s fire and be molded into something stronger, sharper. In moments of joy. I seek to give gratitude.

Peace doesn’t depend on circumstance. It blooms with perspective and good company. I’ve never had better company than God.

3.

God goes to the grocery store with me. I squeeze the steering wheel as I turn out of the gravel driveway. I glance up at the white meringue whisked into baby blue cream and whisper, Dear God…

God answers the prayers I mutter from the kitchen sink, the bubbling red sauce, the sheep pasture where I clomp through green droppings in muck boots, the armchair, the steam billowing off my dinner plate, the pillow where I fall asleep with one last word of thanks.

I have never known this level of peace in adulthood. I have never felt so cared for, so loved. I have never seen so many magnificent miracles unfold right in front of me.

What I know about God for a fact is that my life grew dull, murky, slick, and treacherous without him. And the more I call my father, the more I know peace.

God is my best friend. God is the father I’ve always wanted. God saves me from my own misery most days, and sometimes shows me how to save myself.

Of course my relationship with God is more than a simple pillar categorized alongside health, writing, and celebration. I put him on the list anyway, the same way I write in “Brunch with Mom, 10:00 A.M.” on my agenda. There’s no way I’ll forget that date, I’m far too excited for it. I don’t pencil it in as a reminder, and those 4 words will never capture the impact that one morning will have on me.

I write it in as a keepsake, an honorary acknowledgment that I’m thinking of her, looking forward to our eggs, and bacon, and coffee, and French toast with lemon butter at Herm’s Inn.

God is much more than one of five pillars to me. My life, my joy, these practices and pillars are all created by him. This life in communion with an endless, humorous, fantastic creator means so much more than that. A pillar in his name is a simple honor to give credit where it’s due.