Ok, so some of you know the beginning of this story. Others of you don't. I'm retelling some of it but adding current issues because it shows that even though we initially backslide when the same situations come up, if we are in tune with God, He will speak to us , pull us closer as we come to Him, and He will carry us through.
Further note: Some of you may even know one of the main people in this entry. All I ask is that you don't mention him by name if you wish to leave comments as the internet is public and I want to keep it as anonomyous as possible.
Tonight, for some random reason, I was thinking about a story in Reader's Digest a monthly magazine Mom and my gradnparents have suscribed to monthly, and a publication that I had my nose in from fifth - eleventh grade. The story was entitled, "The Meanest Man I Ever Loved." It was one Marine's memories of Boot Camp with his drill sargant who ridiculed his every move and wasn't satisfied until a task was done perfectly. At the time, the man despised his drill seargant. However, as his career in the Marines went along, he began to appreciate him more and more, and even have fantasies of his drill seargant saving him from battles and things. He came to think of his drill seargant as a father since as a child, the Marine was in the foster care system and had no long term parent figures. The story concludes with the man reuniting with his drill seargant after a few years out of the Marines and the two men swapping stories with the Marine telling his seargant how much influence he really had.
I realize that this story strikes a nerve with me because I was in a similar situation. Instead of the ruggedness of boot camp, the setting was a darkened lecture hall. I had met the 'most hard core man I've ever admired.' Every answer we wrote down had to be perfect, nothing out of place, no stray marks on the page. Though he never made anyone 'drop and give him ten' when he was displeased like the Marine's drill seargant, he did make lots of people cry. By the grace of God, I was never one of those people. Throughout the semester, my friends and I usually discussed how mean he was, how hard the class was, and how too many solvents had addled his brain. We left the class grateful the grades we had and sanity that remained in us. Most of us eagerly burnt or recycled our notes. One of my friends tore her exams to shreds with gusto.
I thought that class would stay locked within some obscure crevasse in my brain, just like the Marine probably thought that he wouldn't think much of his days in Boot Camp. But the summer between my Sophomore and Junior year, my uncle fell ill with terminal cancer. Suddenly I was remembering the pharmecutical lecture. That class. But I started to think something that didn't quite make sense. Over and over in my diary, that summer, I kept writing, "And I want him to be here...", "...and I don't know how, but he could explain it to me." As I did research on my uncle's cancer as well as chemotherapy, and as I saw my uncle get worse and worse, these feelings I couldn't explain heightened.
One day I was talking to God about all this and He asked me why I wanted this other person around so badly, why I was somehow hoping he would appear in the Auraria Campus Library in downtown Denver where I was doing this research, why I was once three digits away from calling the number listed in the campus directory, and why I near constantly reminiscing about his class when I wasn't thinking about my uncle. God showed me what the Marine eventually realized by himself - this person in my mind was going from who he was as his given role in my life to who I wanted him to be for me at the present moment. He was supposed to fill a gap. I was startled to realize that, like the Marine, I was longing for a father figure. I could speak to Mom about my uncle, but not that much because she, as his older sister, was also reeling from his diagnosis. For the most part, I felt alone, so I imagined someone that wasn't hurting like my mom, but was more knowledgable than I to talk to. Like the Marine having dreams about his drill seargant rescuing him in the midst of combat, I started 'mind - tripping' about this person somehow resucing me from this situation or somehow helping me through it.
As the summer went on, God revealed to me that this way of thinking was a trap. I was looking to an image to help me rather than God. Furthermore, the real person couldn't help me due to his lack of belief in God. "You want Someone hard – core?" God asked me one day. "Think about it... a guy who rules everything, made everything, died on a cross to save the world, and calls His followers to give up everything – even their flesh – to follow in His footsteps." Ok. Most definitely Hard Core. God showed me in His word that He already promised to be the "Father to the fatherless," and was the everything and more that was listed just in Isaiah 9:6. I started to put my trust in Him for those things and leave my heart with Him.
In May I thought I was through with my idealizations, through with my longing for this exxagerated form of a person to rescue me from things, but then my grandfather – the closest person to a father that I have had suffered a stroke. As he grew worse over Finals week, I knew my mind was regressing back into needing that other person. I didn't speak to him, but I wanted to. I saw him in passing several times during the first weeks in summer schoool, but I didn't have the energy to talk to him due to being worried about Grandpa. Plus I knew I really couldn't. But that didn't stop me from wanting to.
The battle raged on: I want to talk to him. But I can't. But I want to. But you should talk to God. But this is the second summer God put me through a trial involving my family. But you still can't talk to... I could feel my mind slipping back down into that pit of my own musings that I didn't want the light of God to ever see (even though I knew He knew.) Slowly I started talking to God even when it hurt. Slowly I would allow my mind to be open to God to comfort it even as Mom and I walked down the hallway to Grandpa's room in his new long term care facility.
My situation is definitely hard core. I am still in the middle of combat – the battle for Grandpa's health, and the battle for my mind. But I have a Rescuer more real than anyone that I had dreamed up. I no longer walked by a particular corner of campus looking up at the 3rd floor of one of the buildings wondering if a certain window would be illuminated. I watch the sunrise and sunset from my windows in the Lory Apartments and remember God was faithful. Early this month, I showed Mom the horticulture garden and was led to quote Romans 1:20. God's light is bigger than that little light in an office window. God is always by my side through all this, sometimes carrying me around when I am so physically and emotionally tired that I just want to lie in bed. He is the 'most hard core Person that has ever loved me.'
