I am a Change Agent

/ W. Keith Brenton / 8 Comments

There’s really no point in denying it.

I want to be changed. Transformed. Broken down and ground up into powder and mixed with water and remolded and reshaped into the image of Jesus, the Christ. Then fired in the kiln so I won’t shape-shift again. If that’s what it takes.

And that’s always what it takes.

I want that for everyone.

I won’t lie about how much it hurts to give up self and dreams and what-I-want. I’ve been experiencing the long slow process of it for the better part of fifty years now. Trust me on this. It hurts.

Still I want it for everyone.

Because the life it leads to is so much richer than the one with all the “me” stuff. The one that ends with having and achieving and compiling and dying.

And I want to be an agent for as many who are willing to make that change along with me.

So I will run into opposition from those who don’t want to change. Those who know better than me. Who already have everything right and whose churches have everything right. Who don’t need to reconsider anything because there’s no possibility that they’ve been wrong about anything.

But that’s all just silly.

Change is what becoming a follower of Jesus is all about.

What do they think “repent” means?

Change doesn’t happen all at once. It isn’t over when the confession of sin and Jesus’ lordship leaves our lips. It isn’t complete when the last droplet of baptismal water evaporates from the skin. It’s a lifetime of growth, learning, seeking, finding, studying, questioning, reasoning, praying, meditating, listening, loving, living, forgiving, acting, doing, trying, failing, and trying again. Then dying to self. Then really, really living.

Part of that process is traveling with others, conversing, sharing, challenging, being challenged, agreeing, disagreeing, being accountable to, confessing, needling, prodding — and being willing to accept all of that.

It’s treating everyone with respect, cherishing equality, acting justly, loving mercy, walking with humility, loving deeply, trying very hard not to judge, seeing a father God in the faces of everyone you meet, refusing to discriminate because of anything different from self. Anything.

So that’s what I try to do.

Failing frequently, but still determined to try.

That makes me a change agent.

And that’s okay with me.

Memorial Day

/ W. Keith Brenton / 2 Comments

I am never quite sure what to do with Memorial Day.

I put out my flag this morning, and knotted a stars-and-stripes tie around my neck. I went to work, as many Americans do … and I would have stayed home or traveled if I could have, as many other Americans do.

I want to honor those who gave their lives on behalf of my country.

But I don’t want to glorify the wars that took so many of them from us.

I don’t want to perpetuate a picture that war is somehow noble, and that soldiers die with the intention and goal of preserving our nation and its better qualities, and that they universally succeed just by having died.

No.

Some of them chose to go to war. Some were conscripted. Some died to protect their fellow soldiers. Some died in a hail of bullets, storming a beach or a fortress or an onrushing enemy. Some died tending the wounded, building a bridge, feeding the troops, digging a trench, sitting in a dark wet flithy place … terrified and out of ammunition and hopeless and weeping. Others died from malaria, influenza, a host of fatal infections. Some starved. Some were taken prisoner and tortured and executed. Some were obliterated by missiles, bombs, artillery shells, mines, grenades and the hosts of cowardly weaponry that we call modern mechanized warfare. Some perished by drowning, in accidents, by “friendly” fire intentional and unintentional, by seizures and heart attacks and strokes and sheer terror. And let’s be honest, some could not handle the heinous hellishness of it and ended their own lives.

That doesn’t even begin to cover all who survived, but in the aftermath survived without full health, or limbs, or the wholeness of emotional stability or even sanity.

I honor them all. They lived and died (and some lived half-lives again) at their country’s call.

But no country should send its strong and smart young people into war as a solution of first resort, and that has happened too often.

However these many suffered and died, and for whatever cause, if they did so even nominally to preserve freedom of choice in our land, then I think the rest of us owe it to them (as well as to each other) to choose more wisely, to choose our leaders with more care, to choose to insist that our leaders see to it that those who fight and build and serve and defend and die on behalf of the rest of us always receive the best chance they can have to succeed and survive and recover.

And that includes keeping them out of war’s harm until all the other options have been exhausted.

All of them. Every time.

I don’t know how to say the phrase “Happy Memorial Day” anymore. It’s just not a happy holiday.

We can work or barbecue or vacation or play in gratitude for what others have done, sure.

But at what cost.

You’re Not Doing It Right

/ W. Keith Brenton / 3 Comments

I’m a firm believer that if you don’t have so much real dairy butter and jam, preserves or honey that it’s dripping off your buttermilk biscuit and on to your plate or your lap, you’re doing it wrong.

My goal is for that to be as far as I will go about things that I tell people they’re doing wrong when they’re doing their best to be doing it right.

You don’t have to cruise the ‘net very long to see that one of the worst problems in posting society is that we all think we’re experts on pretty much everything and it’s our right and duty to tell everyone else that they’re doing it wrong.

Especially in matters concerning church.

If others aren’t doing church the way we’re doing church, and have always done church, and the way we’re daggum sure they did it in the first century anno domini, then they’re doing it wrong.

And I’m afraid I am no exception.

But what if we are doing it wrong? Or, not so much wrong, as just … poorly? inefficiently? in a badly organized, overly organizational, super-institutional-and-democratic way?

Do we really need to grow into mega-churches? with huge fulltime staffs and preaching ministers and boards of elders and passels of deacons?

Or do churches just need servants of Jesus Christ?

Could we avoid a lot of heartache and heartbreak over hiring, firing, salary, benefits, office space, governance, authority, ego and id … if we all ministered? If our ministers all had fulltime jobs and careers, where they witnessed for Christ daily, and all of our members were ministers?

I don’t know if it would work everywhere, or even could anymore. We have centuries of tradition with hierarchies of leadership and professional ministry and authority roles and authority games and authority divisions and church divisions and legislation of rules and breaking of rules and breaking of hearts — including God’s.

How could we possibly consider giving up such a long and rich tradition?

We’re doing church right, aren’t we?

Then why ain’t it working?

No, maybe the small-and-humble way doesn’t work and wouldn’t work. Now. Everywhere.

But I know it works in the little church family with whom I worship. They have a church building (actually, they’ve been deeded at least a couple of others in other towns that have ceased meeting). They have four deacons, who oversee certain areas of service.

No budget to speak of.

No paid fulltime minister.

No elders.

The preaching still gets done. The Sunday school classes get taught. And everyone looks after everyone else; everyone is a shepherd for everyone else.

Missionaries are supported. People in need of prayer are prayed for, with bold and powerful prayers. Rides are provided for those who can’t or don’t drive. The sick are visited. Those in need are provided for, sometimes with affordable housing.

And a year ago, as my dear wife Angi lay dying, my little church family saw to it that we were going to be moved into a beautifully-renovated house that I would be able to afford, and where we had hoped she could convalesce and get around more easily.

Maybe we’re an anomaly. Maybe it wouldn’t work now, and everywhere.

But there’s a good chance that it did, maybe for many years, in that legendary first century — where only two instructions are given about elders among all those epistles to different churches in different cities. And nothing was ever said about ministers who were paid to stay at a church and do the work that the members should be doing, or about elders hiring and firing them, or about finances and ownership of buildings.

Maybe the way it’s generally done today is fine.

Still ….

Is it working?

Is it bringing people closer to Christ?

Is it growing the kingdom in quality as well as quantity?

Or is it just the comfortable last bastion of defense for the status quo and for generations of conviction that we’ve always done it the right way as long as anyone can remember ….

… until they read the scriptures, and there it is?

 

Sunday Morning in a Garden, II

/ W. Keith Brenton / 3 Comments

As Roadie and I walked a few minutes ago, we passed little Webster Methodist Church across the street from my house. There, in the tiny garden beside it, congregants had gathered in a circle inside the perimeter of its white picket fence. They had gathered for a sunrise service, but no sunrise was in evidence. Standing in their pastels with sweaters and jackets against the chilly fog, they were singing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” in unison, with increasing volume at each verse. Inside, a piano plinked away the harmony through open windows.

I wanted to pull out my phone and take a picture, but it was too sacred a moment to capture in a photo or a vine.

“Christ hath opened paradise!” they sang, and awakening songbirds joined in.

Roadie alerted and mumbled as if he would like to join in, too.

At the center of the tulip-graced garden is a path in the shape of a cross, lined with timbers and paved with wood chips. From it, there is really no place to go but up.

No miracle happened. The sun did not break out of the clouds. The chill did not give way to warmth. All over town, graves remained closed.

But they sang a song of faith that sometime, all that will change.

And it will.

For Better or Worse

/ W. Keith Brenton / 2 Comments

A year ago, we received the initial diagnosis of Angi’s stage four pancreatic cancer.

A couple of days ago, I lost my uncle Mark Alfred.

A couple of hours ago, I posted on Twitter and Facebook, “I was going to whine, but I decided I am too blessed for that.”

And I am.

Whether you believe in a loving, forgiving God who brings people back to life, or an angry all-powerful God who strikes people dead, or both, or neither … you can bank on this:

Things can always be worse than they are.

There, I’ve said it. I’m not taking it back. Cheap, televangelist, sop wit philosophy.

Nevertheless: true.

One year ago and less, things were much worse than you know in my world and you still don’t need to know how bad or what it was that made it that bad. Some of you prayed about it, not even knowing what you were praying about, and that didn’t matter because I believe God heard.

And He kept things from being much worse.

You see, last night I dreamed about Angi. Dreams don’t make sense, so just ride with me. Angi and I were touring the local high school. Maybe it was a parent night; I don’t know. In this dream, Angi could talk.

But she couldn’t make sense. Just as she couldn’t in reality, those last few days of her life.

In this dream, she could walk. But barely, and she couldn’t mount stairs without a lot of help — just as it was in those last weeks of her life, while the cancer attacked her brain.

You know, she could have survived. Angi could have survived like that, for a long long time, suffering and struggling to climb steps and make sense and express herself. She could have had the kind of life no one would wish on themselves, and no kind person would wish on anyone else.

It could have been worse than even that. I could have lost her, and a child, or both children, more family, more dear ones. It happens to all kinds of people all the time, in crimes and terrorist acts and wars and disasters.

I could have been widowed plus childless, jobless, homeless, penniless, friendless, hopeless. Any combination, or all.

None of that took place. People who loved us and cared for us … edged quietly in from every part of my life to help, provide, shelter, comfort, to mourn, and to respect the sudden vacuum created in my family’s lives without trying to replace the dearest one that we had lost.

You can choose to believe they did it of themselves. You can choose to believe that God worked through them. Whatever you believe, they were there.

Keeping things from being so much worse than they could have been.

I know what I choose to believe.

I don’t think the phrase “for better, for worse” was a part of the wedding vows Angi and I repeated to each other. We wrote our own, and in the joy of the moment, each forgot much of what we’d written — and winged it. I remember promising “… in good times and bad, wealth and want, prosperity or poverty, illness or health ….”

Things were always better when Angi was in my life.

And I choose for them to remain better because Angi was in my life.

I don’t think it has taken me a lifetime or the 22 years of our marriage or even the past year to come to that conclusion … just to put it into words.

Those are my two-bit words of wisdom: We choose.

We choose how we view and how we deal with what life brings us, and what it takes away.

Every hour, every day, every year.

For better or worse.

The Difference Between Truth and Fact

/ W. Keith Brenton / 4 Comments

There is a difference, you know.

Before you argue with me, let me define my terms for the sake of the conversation.

Facts are a set that overlap the set containing truth, if you want to graph the difference. Dictionaries define “truth” as “a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like;” they define a “fact” as “a truth known by actual experience or observation; something known to be true.”

There’s an objective value to fact. Facts are known by “actual experience or observation.” Facts can be researched, measured, quantitatively tested, verified, proven.

There’s a subjective value to truth. Truth can be a “fact, proposition, principle or the like.” Truth can be expressed, discussed, qualitatively evaluated, affirmed, accepted.

Facts populate the language of science.

Truth populates the language of faith.

Truth allows people the dignity of making an informed choice, of thinking for themselves, of meditating and considering and evaluating and coming to a point where they can say within themselves, “I believe.”

Well, this is what I believe:

creation

The Bible is not scientific study. Scientific study is not the Bible.

The study of the origins of the universe through science is not the study of the beginning of God’s story about mankind.

One looks to answer how was the world created; the other, by Whom and why.

Let me put it this way. You can look up what grass is at Wikipedia. I already have, and here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass.

You can look up a poem that asks and answers “What is grass?” by Walt Whitman, and it goes like this: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-child-said-what-is-the-grass/

grass

Now, who is right?

Wikipedia? or Whitman?

Well, they both are.

They’re both “right.”

Because Wikipedia is trying to answer the question in a scientific way — with facts.

And Whitman is trying to explore the question in a poetic way — through truth.

You don’t get faith from scientific study, although many of the answers you will find within it are formed from evidence, conjecture, experimentation, AND faith in the conclusions based on the results and the logic used to reach them.

You don’t get science from the Bible, even though many of the things you read there have a basis in communicating source and order and reason and purpose. So we meditate on it, talk about it, come to conclusions, and we believe what we choose to believe.

The purpose of science is to help us find answers.

The purpose of the Bible is to help us find faith.

What might happen to our worldview if we stopped trying to see the Bible as a book communicating dry facts and tedious law, and saw it as a volume telling us the truth, a Story leading to a proposition/principle/or-the-like to be accepted or rejected?

And that proposition would answer the most important question of all:

Is Jesus the Messiah looked forward to in prophecy from earliest times … the fulfillment in full obedience of the law of God … His very Son through whom and by whom and for whom all things were created … the last Adam undoing the fatal lock of sin upon our souls wrought by the first Adam and every Adam’s child of us since … the perfect-yet-crucified-yet-resurrected Savior and Reconciler of all creation to her Creator?

How would it affect our view of others if we saw them not as good or evil; right or wrong; lost or saved; this or that; one or the other — but as beloved of God to the point that every last Adam’s child of us since Eden was worth the price of the very life of His Son?

How could it not improve our ministry of the gospel if we focused on the gospel, the Story, the main thing and not all the seeming factual contradictions or the tantalizing mysteries or the difficulties of translation or the differences of language and meaning? If we left behind the elementary doctrines of man about salvation and sanctification and predestination and excommunication — and only, singularly, lovingly told the story of Jesus over and over and over with undiminished and increasing passion; passion that is the very witness and hallmark of His Holy Spirit within us?

What if we let the facts sort themselves out by the ones who are enamored and enraptured by facts and science and proof, and we just told the simple truth?

And gave people the gift of reaching their own conclusions?

Compartmentalization

/ W. Keith Brenton / 4 Comments

Compartmentalization is an unconscious psychological defense mechanism used to avoid cognitive dissonance, or the mental discomfort and anxiety caused by a person’s having conflicting values, cognitions, emotions, beliefs, etc. within themselves. – current Wikipedia definition

By definition, we do this unconsciously. But that is no excuse for not trying to step outside of ourselves and looking at things the way they are, rather than the way we want to perceive them.

For instance, I have a problem with the argument that Galatians 3:28 only refers to “salvation.” Galatians 3:28 is a foundational principle of God’s view toward people generally, outweighing any of the manmade rules and regulations we might wish to superimpose on other scriptures for all eternity. (Rules and regulations for all time, you see, that exclude a woman from leading in public worship or serving God’s church in certain ways.)

Here’s what the verse says:

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Simple enough.

The context in chapter 3 is the issue of faith versus works of the law in salvation.

Fair enough.

Notice, however, that the immediate context is unity and equality.

And, even more importantly, salvation cannot be categorized to include only eternal life to come nor even to eternity AND the 167 hours of each week spent  outside of the walls where worship takes place.

Salvation is as much here and now as it is hereafter and to come. When we are saved, we are bought with a price and given a purpose in life to prepare ourselves and help others prepare for a life to come. It is a lifetime of worship, not an hour on Sunday morning, and it starts now and lasts forever.

Either we are all one in Christ Jesus twenty-four hours of every day, or we are not one in Christ Jesus at all.

The whole gist of Galatians 3 and the rest of the epistle surrounding it is a plea to break the yoke of the law from which we should have graduated into a faith and a relationship with God through Christ which transcends law. We live a life that expresses our desire to worship God all the time and in every way we can. We proclaim Jesus as Lord. We go into all the world. All of the world. All of the time.

All of us.

There is no exclusion clause that says, “Except for women on Sunday morning in front of the gathered saints” or “except for females in the presence of males over the age of twelve” or “except when people of both genders are served and shepherded.” Exclusion clauses are a part of the world of laws, and we’re supposed to be over that.

Over a picture of God as damning tyrant, eager to punish the least infraction of encrypted rules and regulations because we failed to crack the code.

Over the need to behave by rules rather than walk by faith.

Over the craving to achieve our own salvation rather than working it out as a fait accompli through the grace of Jesus Christ and the empowerment of His own Holy Spirit living within us.

You can’t compartmentalize out Galatians 3:28 of leadership in the life of any follower of Christ.

You can’t minimize it as a fundamental principle of God’s expressed relationship to people by categorizing it as a rule whose exceptions prove it.

You can’t resolve your cognitive dissonance that way. If you perceive dissonance between what scripture actually says and what you are comfortable having it say, then what you are comfortable having it say must be re-examined, discredited, and discarded.

Discarding what it actually says is not an option.

And we absolutely must be honest with ourselves by asking and answering the question of ourselves:

Why do I want for scripture to exclude women from certain responsibilities of service within the Kingdom of God?

Is it only my zeal for the word?

Or do I have an agenda there that undermines what the word actually says?

 My own comfort with what I believe? My satisfaction with scripture as encrypted rulebook? My desire to be in control?

I’ve had to be honest with myself about this and come to a different conclusion than I would have reached thirty years ago. It hasn’t been easy.

But it is worth letting go of logically unjustifiable compartmentalization to get to the truth, and get a little closer to what God really wants for me; for everyone:

A life of faithful proclamation of the Story and service to others, uninhibited by race, social status or gender.

You see, that’s not just what Galatians 3:28 is all about, or what salvation is all about.

It’s what the Bible … the word … the Story is all about.

Uncompartmentalized.

Preaching

/ W. Keith Brenton / 2 Comments

I estimate that, over the past 50 years, I’ve probably heard about 5,000 sermons.

That, of course, makes me an expert on preaching.

That, and the fact that I’ve been preaching part-time, maybe every third or fourth Sunday, for a whole year now.

Oh, and maybe leaving preaching and going on to meddling in my blog for about nine years now.

I’ve found that I don’t do as well preaching from a script or from an outline as I do when just speaking from the heart. I’ve discovered that my audiences seem to listen, evaluate, and appreciate that more.

I’ve seen that funny isn’t always funny and sometimes the unintentional, spontaneous, earnest comment is more hilarious or touching or convicting than anything you can possibly plan to say.

I’ve experienced the attractive magnetism of the gospel, the Story; and I’ve experienced the repellent force of opinion expressed as if it were gospel. I’ve tried proving a point, and I’ve tried telling the Story.

I’ve learned that I can spend too much time preparing for a sermon and end up chasing rabbit trails and speaking too long.

I’ve accepted that short and bittersweet beats didactic and saccharine.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

So my only expert advice after one whole year of part-time preaching experience would be this:

Find what works for you as a minister of the gospel, and what works for your audience — whether you speak, write or live the gospel — and strike an effective balance between the two. You’re not going to reach everyone. Some will be drawn by the one who planted; another by the one who waters. God will give the growth. Reach as many as you can as well as you can without trying to strain too far beyond the gifts His Spirit has given you to do so.

Always make it clear when you are reading and relating scripture, and when you are expressing your opinion or interpretation. There’s nothing wrong with expressing an opinion or an interpretation and encouraging your audience to weigh what scripture actually says and come to their own conclusions. God wants us to meditate on His word and share our thoughts on it. But perceiving our own thoughts on it as equal to His word leads to presumptuous arrogance, and judgmentalism, and that pushes away those whom we would seek to draw closer to God. It might draw them closer to you or me as a minister if they strongly agree with some point we’ve made, but that’s not what we’re called to do.

Tell the Story. Tell it in its simplicity and beauty and exquisite poignancy. Tell it from your point of view. Tell it from scripture’s point of view. Tell it from any point of view you can comprehend. Tell it as if your life and soul depended on it. Tell it as if your audience’s lives and souls depend upon it. Never tire of telling the Story. Never apologize that it is, in fact, a Story — because that’s the way God wanted it told to us, and that’s the way He wants us to tell it to others.

Spend a moment at the table. It’s usually a prop that is always present. Whether you and your church family have just celebrated the supper at that table or are about to, it’s a reminder of the centerpiece of your worship together: Jesus Christ, Son of God, given and crucified; body and blood; life and death and life again. It’s at the heart of why we gather. Refer to it often, and lovingly, and meaningfully.

That’s pretty much what I’ve learned in a nutshell. It’s worth almost as much as one. You can’t expect too much from something that comes out of a nutshell, because most of what comes out of them is nuts.

So take it with a few grains of salt.

(I’ve found so far that most folks like salted nuts.)

Not Exactly a Prayer

/ W. Keith Brenton / 5 Comments

God,

I think I understand now why the Charlie Anderson character in “Shenandoah” feels more comfortable talking to his dead wife than he does talking to You.

I understand Charlie’s dinner-table prayers better now. The anger. The insistence on self-sufficiency. The determination to pray anyway because that was what she had done and it would have made her happy if she were still there at the dinner table.

I comprehend better what he feels to have a son distant and a daughter to whom awful things have happened.

Is that what this is all about, God? Becoming more compassionate toward a character in a drama?

No. Of course not.

But it’s not like You’re going to tell me what it’s all about, either. Those days of You speaking out of the whirlwind are gone, aren’t they?

Even Your answers to Job were mostly questions. Like that would help.

And It’s not like I blame you that Angi’s gone. You didn’t do that. I know who did, and I hate the evil that urges sin that leads to death at least as much as You do.

Yet you permit it. Sin and death, I mean. You let it happen. And there are millions of us who are trying to figure out why. Some will pin their disbelief on it. If You existed and You are good, they say, You wouldn’t permit it.

As if they understand all about You and can judge You any better than Adam and Eve did. Or what good is. Or what love really means.

Oh, I have my theories. That You created us to choose, and to make the choice fair You make it based entirely on faith and our perception of good in what we experience. You give us the choice to love You and others more than self or to love self more than anything else. And it doesn’t always work. A lot of us choose to love self thinking somehow that in spite of all the consequences of social alienation and personal guilt and even some perception of Your absence in our lives, being in love with self feels so good that it’s the best thing ever. I get that.

What I can’t fathom is why You would put someone in my life and the lives of so many others who loved self less and others more — someone who did that with such grace and abandon, like Angi — only to allow her to be taken away when so many years of that exemplary love could have blessed so many more, and so deeply.

I don’t get that at all.

I suppose it’s part of this whole faith environment that You remain inscrutable as a stone Buddha on the matter.

No, I haven’t forgotten Your Son. I know you allowed the same thing to happen to Him, and worse, and at probably half Angi’s age. I also know she went out of this world with all of the confidence in Your power to bring life back and better that He did.

Is that what this is about? Faith at the end? Faith that doesn’t quit? Faith that looks ahead in love?

Because I’ve got to tell You that, even with all the faith I can generate, life without her seems pretty awful right now, no matter how many other blessings You may send. Maybe I should see them better for what they are, but the proportion of pain seems so gigantic in my life that they are often eclipsed.  Life is empty and dark and cold, and its purpose is murky and its foundation is shaky and its ultimate end is never in sight — like the horizon of a planet too big to circumnavigate in a thousand years.

My friends say it’s all right to be angry with You. That Job got angry with You. That the psalmists were often angry with You. That You’re big enough to take it.

But being angry doesn’t help. And blaming doesn’t help. And being theoretical about theodicy doesn’t help. And being overwhelmed by grief doesn’t help.

Nothing. Helps.

Angi’s gone. And I’m still here. And, with the tiniest fraction of all her extraordinary gifts, I’m supposed to muck through all of this life stuff without her.

I get that, too.

She’s not around to talk to anymore. She’s not here to listen, not here to offer advice, not here to comfort or counsel or give warmth or a sweet embrace when words don’t work anymore. She was never stingy with any of that.

So I hope You understand that, just like Charlie Anderson, sometimes I’d rather talk to her.

Than to You.

And I trust that You really are big enough to take that.

Amen.

I Feel a Little Betrayed

/ W. Keith Brenton / 9 Comments

I admit it.

I thought they were a few words from God, whispered by His Spirit into my mind:

“You could be very happy married to this woman for the rest of your life.”

I thought that they implied somehow that I would, in fact, be married to Angi for the rest of my life.

That I would go first, because she was the stronger and smarter and sweeter and more spiritual of the two of us and she would be able to handle everything better without me than I ever could without her.

angi

The pain. The loss. The alone-ness.

There was no second phrase, “if she outlives you.”

Or “until she succumbs to pancreatic cancer.”

I feel a little betrayed. Because the implication seemed so clear.

And those words 23 years ago (and a little more) proved to be so very prophetically true.

I was happy. Blissfully happy. Gloriously happy. Sometimes ridiculously happy.

But that’s not what the words actually said; those words that I heard in my mind and heart in that once-and-once-only-in-a-lifetime moment when I thought I heard God.

“You could ….”

I could have chosen to be unhappy anyway, married to the sweetest person God ever put in the path of anyone ever.

I could have decided to hurt and betray her and end our marriage in divorce and wound our children and friends and family and church – not that it was ever a temptation, ever.

The point is, those were possibilities; things I could have done, among many other things that I could have chosen.

And she could have chosen. Not that it was ever in Angi’s nature to choose anything that didn’t, to the best of her ability, strengthen our marriage and benefit our kids and honor God.

And He could have chosen something else.

He did. He chose to let His Son take her home, long before I was ready, long before we had enjoyed the retirement years we had just begun to talk about, and just before our kids are fully though nearly grown.

That’s what I’m beginning to realize, and what I’m trying not to feel betrayed about.

What I heard in my heart all those years ago was an opportunity.

A chance to do-over, since my first marriage failed.

A choice that I could make to be happy with the once-and-only-once-in-a-lifetime Angela Laird.

That’s what I chose.

The hard part is choosing the same thing now, without her in the years ahead that we had envisioned and hoped for and had begun to plan for.

Those words were not a guarantee, implied or expressed.

They were an opportunity.

I don’t have to hear them whispered into my mind again to know that I have the same opportunity now that I did then.

Or to know that, in that way, you and I are no differently blessed.

I could be happy.

You could be happy.

Did I hear those words from God?

In this life, I may never know.

I only know that they were true.