I wrote this last month in Quito, without even knowing really why I was telling the story. I think a God was looking ahead and giving me a blog for Easter. I didn’t title it, and as I was praying this morning, I asked the Lord what to call it. I have used the title I received. At first I was puzzled, and saw no connection between what I’d written and the title. Then I realized what the title meant. The story which follows is the story of a bird in a cage, and how it came to leave its cage.
I have a place in my parents’ house that is forever burned into my memory. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first, some exposition.
A few months after my then-spouse and I separated, and before the annulment went through, (another story for another time) I was working at Mercy in the E.R. and had been picking up shifts hand over fist to avoid all the emotional turbulence. (Pros: pay of half your student loans in a year. Cons: avoidance and sporadically crying while cleaning.)
God and I had been… Well, I was avoiding Him like the plague, to be honest. To call my life a mess would be an understatement, and as it was mostly a mess of my own making, I really didn’t want a tête à tête with the Almighty. Thus, bonus shifts and overtime. So I was not at all interested when He began His favorite trick of tugging at my brain and telling me to come talk to Him. Not. At. All.
I fought for three days. I could avoid Him at work (it was an emergency room, after all) but after work, at home, it was miserable. I DID NOT WANT TO TALK TO HIM. But He just kept prompting. If you can imagine, for a moment, trying to watch Netflix and Jesus sitting on the counter staring at you from across the room, unblinking, for hours, you have essentially captured the scene.
How I withstood three days of this is beyond me. Just thinking about it is enough to make me cry “uncle.” Finally, on day three, I looked at my imaginary Jesus staring me down and went, “What!?”
“Come talk to me,” he seemed to say.
And that is where the place burned in my memory forever comes in. My parents’ guest room is downstairs off of the family room, and there is a lovely bit of carpet measuring about 12 square feet in the corner between the filing cabinet and the wall. It was the first place I could think of where no one would bug me, and more importantly, was not my space. Neutral ground for the opposing sides in my personal spiritual Cold War.
I took my shoes off à la Moses. I was coming to meet the King. Shoes come off on Holy ground.
The sense of fear and shame was agonizing. I sat down and took a deep breath. Tears filled my eyes and I grit my teeth. The elephant in the room was the massive mental wall I had put up between me and the Lord, and only one of us had the power to bring it down.
Opening remarks at the summit:
” Lord, I’m gonna take down this wall, but I am so afraid you’re gonna crush me. I just can’t have you crush me. Please. Please don’t crush me.”
As peace talks go, that was probably not the best tactic. (It’s considered poor form to negotiate from a position of weakness.) But as I had, at that point, the resilience of a damp feather, and the other guy was God, I figured posturing could take a back seat.
Then came the pivotal moment; I closed my eyes and just stopped fighting. The wall cracked, and I braced myself for my impending judgement. Some serious smiting was surely inbound.
In spite of all the wrong things done in His name, all the things that we can’t understand in the 21st century about the Old Testament, and all the perversions of the gospel that have justified oppression and evil for centuries, I would just like to state, for the record, unequivocally, that I serve a God of grace.
In that moment as I braced for the worst, I was overwhelmed -and I do not use that word lightly- overwhelmed by a tremendous sense of peace and love. In that moment, the God of the Universe reached out to me and wrapped me up in His arms, and I felt comforted and whole in a way that I had never experienced before. “I love you, and I am not angry at you” was all my mind could process in that moment.
I have done a lot since that day. I’ve seen and experienced all kinds of things, and been lots of different places. I can always remember that moment. In the “safe room” at work; on my couch watching the rain fall; on a plane landing in Peru; in the desert surrounded by the smell of burning garbage; in the middle of a church service during debrief; behind a stack of chairs in Ecuador; in these places, I remember the day that my best friend came running when I stopped fighting.
Then I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and ask Him once again for His help. And He steps right in and helps, because since that day, He is always within arm’s reach. I don’t let Him get much farther than that. (Which is not to say that I always listen well, because you know, I’m Sean.)
No, I’ve just learned that the number one roadblock in my relationship with God looks at me in the mirror every morning. God’s not going anywhere any time soon.
