a surrender - 65

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter eight, "where is God?") 

In the days that followed I was miserable and confused. I remember sadly telling our friends that we wouldn’t be having a baby after all. I thought and prayed, but couldn’t make any sense of it in my mind. And it scared me. We had finally felt secure enough to bring a child into our precarious life, because it felt like God was helping us. But now that feeling was shaken. I didn’t understand it. We had had so many surprising experiences of what seemed like God’s care and support, so we had felt that it was safe enough for a child. Then it seemed that a child was given to us, and we had been so happy and hopeful. And grateful. Now that child was dead.

The miscarriage happened just after Easter. A few years earlier, we had led the Easter church service for the community on the farm. Heather had written a dramatic reading based on the Easter story. It was set in the days after Jesus’ execution, when his followers were in hiding, terrified and confused. It began with the thoughts of Mary of Magdala, as she prepared to visit Jesus’ tomb:

My eye is pressed to the crack in the shutters, looking for light. The doors and the windows are locked and barred.

The sky is growing gray in the east, I think it is, I know it is; soon it will be light enough to go. Shabbat is over now, that terrible Shabbat. Sitting in the dark, not moving, not speaking; the shuffle of someone’s foot in the darkness, then silence again. Nothing we could bear to say. I sat with the other women around the spices and the smell of the myrrh made me dizzy, and the shadows would shift and float, and I would come to myself again and again. Almost before I had time to think it’s not real—it’s a nightmare, I was jolted by the knowledge that it’s not. It’s true. It happened. I was there.

He’s dead.

He’s dead and the world is not what I thought it was. He’s dead, and it wasn’t true. Oh, oh I know nightmares if anybody does, they walked beside me in the living day, in the time of my demons…. I saw water turn to blood under my hands, I believed my touch would kill children; I ran from them. There were voices, they were with me when I lay down and when I got up—whispering God hates you… until he came.

He told me they were lies. He said to trust him. He asked me if I wanted them gone. They were flailing and screaming but I shouted over their voices, I shouted yes with all my strength—and he whipped them. Oh, if those men could have seen him then, those soldiers, those priests, if they could have seen the power in his hand, the light. His eyes were like the sun—terrible as an army with banners… And they really thought they could kill—Him?

And they did. They did.

There is no doubt. I watched him die. I watched his body broken on the tree. His breaths grew shorter; farther apart; desperate, fast, inhuman gasps, with silence in between. One last one, and then—no more. There is no doubt.

He’s dead. And the world is empty now. And everything he said—

I’m like them now—I never thought I’d be like them. Like my uncle Matthew and the others, when Judas the Galilean was killed and his army scattered, and they came home exhausted and with bitter eyes. They thought Judas was the Messiah. And they were wrong. You believe in a man, you put all your faith in him, the very life in your body is his—who’s to say he didn’t shine in their eyes, as my Lord shone when he drove my demons away, who’s to say he didn’t pull them out of the depths and back into life? You believe in a man, you believe. And then they kill him. And you have to face the truth.

You were wrong.

Continued... 

a surrender - 64

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter eight)

 

where is God?

 

Waiting for the doctor in the brightly lit examination room, we were nervous with anticipation. This was the day we would get to see our baby. The doctor finally came in, explained how the ultrasound worked, and then started the procedure. Our eyes eagerly searched the video image. It was hard to decipher what we were seeing.

The doctor seemed puzzled also. Then she said she was sorry. It seemed that there wasn’t anything there. Sometimes, the doctor told us, early in a pregnancy, the baby stops developing for some reason. It was fairly common, she said.

But it wasn’t common for us. We were stunned. I couldn’t believe it. We walked mechanically out of the doctor’s office and drove home, not knowing what to say to each other, except I love you.

In the days that followed, I kept hoping that the doctor was somehow mistaken. She had said we should expect a miscarriage in the coming days. But I prayed for some kind of miracle. Heather’s pregnancy had seemed like such a gift that I couldn’t believe it was for nothing. I felt like I had to keep believing, that I shouldn’t let go.

But then the pain came. Heather woke up very early one morning with abdominal cramps and some sharper pains, and she couldn’t go back to sleep. She got out of bed and tried to watch a movie to take her mind off it. But after an hour the pain was much worse, so she woke me and said we should go to the hospital. We didn’t have a car. I quickly went to another family’s house, and had to go in and knock on their bedroom door to wake them and ask to borrow their car. By the time I got back, Heather’s pain was worse. Then, when I tried to get her to move, she passed out.

I didn’t know what to do.

Should I try to carry her to the car? Could I make it? Was it even safe? My mind was whirling frantically. How long had she been unconscious?

Then slowly her eyes opened.

And she said the pain was less now. We decided to wait a little while, and gradually she felt better. Relieved, I returned the car to our neighbor; but walking back home, I was angry and crying. Losing the baby wasn’t enough, we had to go through this agony too? Why?

Where was God?

Continued... 

a surrender - 63

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter seven, "freely have you received, freely give") 

Throughout these years on the farm, in our retreats and also in our other work, we remembered what Jesus had told his followers: “Freely have you received, freely give.” Jesus had helped people in many ways, and had always offered his help for free. This meant he could do the work he felt was best, for the people who needed it most, without worrying whether he would get paid for it. He could be single-minded in his work, focusing only on the needs of the people he was serving. He didn’t need to think about what he would get out of it, because God would take care of his needs. “Do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried,” Jesus told his followers, “for everyone seeks after these things, and your Father knows that you need them.” And God did provide all that Jesus needed, in a variety of ways. Many people welcomed him into their homes, and fed him at their tables. People sometimes gave him money, though he didn’t ask for it. Jesus cared for others, and others cared for him—not because they had to, but because they loved him. So everything he received was a gift, an act of love. And he stayed poor and humble, always dependent on that love, as God inspired it. How wondrously different this was from the way work and business are usually done! I had to find out if this was possible for me. And Heather agreed. So we didn’t ask for any payment for our work on the farm, and we tried to live on what the community, and others, offered to give us.

We knew living this way seemed unlikely to work for long. And the added needs of a family made it seem even less likely. We lived simply and kept our needs low. But we knew it would be impossible to “freely give” and still get everything we needed unless God was supporting us. People warned us that it wouldn’t work. That was scary to contemplate, especially now that Heather was dependent on this with me. But we believed God could make it work. We were also encouraged and inspired by the generosity of friends and family. And by the people who came for our retreats. If they could trust the power of God to drive away their demons, we could trust our lives to that power as well.

And, somehow, it did work. The community didn’t charge us for our housing, or for the retreat space. People shared rides in their cars. Good, fresh food came from the farm and from Heather’s own garden. A dentist friend offered his services at a generous discount. Medical care was free because our income was so low. And many different people donated money, for our use and for our retreats.

After four years on the farm, we began feeling that our life was stable enough to try to have a child. And a few weeks later, we found out that Heather was pregnant. It was good timing. The child should come soon after the farming season ended. We looked forward to that day with joy and eagerness.

 

Continued...

a surrender - 62

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter seven, "freely have you received, freely give") 

The men on that first retreat had very hard lives. Most of them were homeless. They had to fend for themselves every day on the streets of the city. One of the men said he identified with the man in Heather’s story, who clung to his demons because they made him strong and they made people fear him. Being feared felt better than being despised.

We were very encouraged after that first retreat. The men had been interested, and eager to talk about their lives and listen to the others. They were grateful for the good food, the rest, and the quiet. And we parted as friends. The experience was inspiring and energizing for us as well, even more than we had hoped. It felt like proclaiming good news to the poor, like Jesus did.

We made lots of new friends during the many retreats at the farm, over the next eleven years. And several of them came back again and again. It was good to see how their lives had changed, and how God was helping them.

Most of our time on the farm, though, was spent helping the community there in various ways. We planted long rows of strawberries, weeded them, picked the berries when they were ripe and sweet, and then covered them with straw for the winter. We weeded and mulched row after row of blueberry bushes, and filled buckets with the berries, plump and delicious. Heather helped tend the huge vegetable garden. And I would drive a truck to the city once a week, to take the vegetables and berries to our friends in the community there. In the winter, we would help cut and split fallen trees, so the wood could season for a year before it was needed to heat houses the following winter. And several days a week I helped make bread and cookies in the community bakery. Most of the bread and produce from the farm was sold at markets, but we also got to enjoy many of those good things ourselves.

As needs arose in the community, we learned new skills to help in other ways. When one of the older men was no longer able to get into his wheelchair by himself, I started visiting him each day to move him, and help with meals and washing and simple medical care. When another member started having trouble with memory, I learned some basic bookkeeping. I also learned to do some of the routine maintenance needed for the homes on the farm. Heather eventually took over managing the large vegetable garden, and learned how to prune the fruit trees and the vineyard. Another man’s back pain was worsening, so I started doing all the mowing. And I learned how to maintain all the shared network equipment; a complicated system was required to provide internet access to our many homes out in the country. It felt good to be able to help, and we were learning useful skills.

Continued... 

a surrender - 61

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter seven, "freely have you received, freely give") 

On the strangely clear horizon there is a sail, coming closer, riding before the wind. I rise to my feet and stare. Someone’s made it through the storm!

They won’t come here, though they seem to be headed for it. No boat makes landfall here. They know what sort of place it is. The boat does not turn, the sail stays steady, grows bigger by the moment. Fear starts to rise in me. Who are these men? They come here—to this cursed place—they’re headed straight for me—through the middle of the worst storm of the year, and with them comes the sun and calm; something’s not right. They are pulling into shore, reefing in the sail, it’s dripping; their boat gleams wet in the sun, the water still sloshes in the bottom of it; they’re still bailing! They were right in the middle of that—and now they’re here.

And one of them has seen me.

I stand tall. I am Legion. They will remember this day.

One of them points, shouts, jumps back in the boat; but the first one acts as if he has not heard. He is coming. As he comes he is looking at me, straight at me, he sees nothing but me.

Legion rises screaming, shrieking, thousands of voices strong; they see him, they see that he sees me—that he sees them. Who is this man? A wild fear and a wild hope rise in me like the wind and another voice drowns out the voice of Legion in my mind, a voice that cracks like a whip: Come OUT of him!

Legion yelps like a kicked dog, then screams again and charges, takes me running, running at him as fast as I can with my tangled hair whipping, a rock still in my hand. I can feel their thousands, thousands of feet trampling me, but I look up and before I am lost to myself I see his face, his eyes, and I see the thing that I will never forget.

He is not afraid.

 

Continued... 

a surrender - 60

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter seven, "freely have you received, freely give") 

I squat here in the rain, not moving, looking up into the angry sky. The rain comes down in fury, battering my face. Any sane man would be crouching under a rock ledge, even inside one of the caves where they bury the rich dead, to be out of this.

I am not a sane man.

I am Legion.

My demons are a legion, an army in my head, marching in step one-two one-two. Too many of them to count. One-two one-two one-two and then suddenly they scream, they shriek their battle-cry and charge, and I am trampled under their feet and I know nothing; those times are my rages, the times I’ve torn chunks out of any man that dared set foot among my tombs. Then I feel no pain. I take the rocks that lie on this hillside and run their sharp edges down my chest and bleed, and I feel no pain. Nothing at all. Just the trickling on my skin as warm as tears.

They thought at first they could bind me, they thought I was a joke, a raving screaming lunatic joke—and they found out how wrong they were. They tried to tame me, tie me like a goat to a post—I tore their ropes to shreds. They tried to chain me up and I pulled their chains in two, I chased them through the tombs whipping the broken chain around my head, big men screamed and ran from me.

No one can look me in the face and not be afraid.

No one can bind me.

I stand and shout it to the storm as the thunder booms around me: I am Legion! No one can bind me! And the rain runs down my scarred body and the wind whips my tangled hair around my face and the lightning rips the sky and the thunder cracks again—

And within the space of a breath the storm is gone.

I saw it happen, saw the clouds pull back, draw themselves in and up into blue sky. Sunlight shooting down as sudden as lightning. The waves on the lake flattening out into calm, like the raised hackles of a dog suddenly lying down again at the sound of his master’s voice—there is something out there.

Continued... 

a surrender - 59

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter seven, "freely have you received, freely give") 

Later that summer we had our first retreat guests come for a weekend. Friends had given us a dining room table and chairs just the day before. And only a few days before that we had finished painting the third guest room. We were still short two mattresses, two bedsprings, and a nightstand. Two families at the farm loaned us mattresses for the weekend, so we decided to just put the mattresses on the floor, and set up a temporary nightstand. The two staff people with the group slept in that room. There were fresh blueberries, green beans, potatoes, and lettuce from our garden, and several kinds of fresh bread from the farm bakery. I made pizza. Heather roasted two chickens. And everyone had as much as they wanted.

We listened a lot that weekend. And we all discussed the story of Jesus confronting a man’s demons. Heather read to us her own version of the story, to help us get a deeper understanding of what happened that day:

Bad storm today. The sky is as black as my mind, and the wind is whipping the lake till it heaves and groans with the pain, humps itself up into waves that are taller than me. Lightning rips down the sky onto the water, close—very close—the thunder cracks as soon as the light is gone, a sound of huge stone smashing against stone, almost drowning out the voices in my head.

I look up to the cliff where the pigs are pastured; I can hear them when the thunder fades, grunting and screaming in fear. The pig-herders are having a bad day of it. Everyone is; except me. 

Anyone out on that lake is a goner, but here on my hillside of rocks and caves and graves I listen to the thunder and it wraps me in sound, and the voices are stilled to a low angry mutter and I can hear myself think 

I like storms.

Continued... 

a surrender - 58

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter seven, "freely have you received, freely give") 

Over the weeks that followed, we slowly made our way south to my parents’ house. But we didn’t stay with them long. As soon as we arrived, we found out that one of the families at the farm had moved away, so there was an apartment available for us. And it was in a large community building that had a small library and several unused rooms next to the apartment, which could be made into guest bedrooms. So we took a bus back to the farm.

That winter, we started preparing our retreat house. We stripped wallpaper and painted all the rooms. We asked for donations of beds and blankets. We searched resale shops for sheets and towels and decorations, and found a pretty set of china dishes that could serve twelve. We wanted to treat the people who came for retreats as honored guests in our home, serving our best food, on our finest dishes. We wanted to show our respect for them, as Jesus did.

We were inspired by Jesus’ words, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.” So our retreats would be free. And we would invite people who normally couldn’t afford retreats, from ministries and transitional programs, often from the city, and we’d offer transportation too. We already had some money from our wedding, and family and friends on the farm offered money for the retreats as well.

In the spring we started working on the farm again. I remember riding out to the fields on our bikes, in the chilly air of dawn, to pick sweet corn before market. We had to wear raincoats because the leaves were so wet with dew. Every day at lunchtime we ate quickly and fell into bed, so we could get some sleep before we had to start work again in the afternoon. Those days were long and exhausting.

Continued... 

a surrender - 57

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter seven, "freely have you received, freely give") 

A few weeks later we visited a similar community. It had been started in the 1940s following the model of Jesus’ early followers, and was known as a place where black and white people could live and work together peacefully, as equals. Clarence Jordan wrote about their experience starting the place:

I remember quite well that we were supposed to pay the fellow $2500 down. Martin England, who was a missionary under the American Foreign Mission Society to Burma, and I started it together. We agreed on [pooling our finances] and I had the idea that Martin was loaded. I don’t know why I should think that, he being an American Baptist missionary, but he talked about, “Let’s do this and let’s do that,” and I said, “Yeah, let’s do” and I thought he had the money. And so I said, “Let’s do this and let’s do that” and he said, “Yeah, let’s do” and when we finally pooled our common assets, we had $57.13. We were three weeks from the time we had agreed to pay $2500 down! To make a long story short, we put down that $2500. A fellow brought it to us and said God had sent him with it. I didn’t question him—we took it right quick before God changed his mind.

Years later, a newspaper reporter came out there and asked, “Who finances this project?”

Well, all along, folks who had helped us said that God had sent them, so I said to this newspaper reporter, “God does.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I know. But who supports it?”

I said, “God.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, “but who, who, who, uh, who—you know what I’m talking about. Who’s back of it?”

I said, “God.”

He said, “But what I mean is, how do you pay your bills?”

I said, “By check.”

“But,” he said, “I mean—hell, don’t you know what I mean?”

I said, “Yeah, friend, I know what you mean. The trouble is you don’t know what I mean!”

While we were there, I got an e-mail from the pastor of the church where we found the baby shower. Someone had showed him that I had briefly (and without naming the church) mentioned the incident online, and he had then read about our walk and our preparations to offer free retreats. He said he was sorry that they had not invited us to stay at his church that night. The next Sunday he had preached about the experience. “I would like to ask,” he wrote, “if you are ever coming through this area again, I would love for you and your wife to share with our church. If I can ever be of assistance feel free to call.”

Continued...

a surrender - 56

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter seven, "freely have you received, freely give") 

Sara, a friend I had met online, picked us up from the library and we enjoyed being with her family for almost a week. The day after we left them, she wrote to tell us that her four-year-old daughter had seemed worried about us. “I want dem to stay all night, ‘cuz I yuv dem,” she told Sara. “If dey det a baby boy or dirl dey will need a house.” But when Sara told her that God would provide a house for us when we needed one, she seemed satisfied. “Dod a’ways helps us,” she said. 

Two days later we were in a library and a man struck up a conversation with Heather. He introduced himself as a pastor, an African, from Cameroon. When Heather told him that her great-grandparents were missionaries there years ago, he got excited and began asking more about our walk. Soon we were at his house, sharing cassava dipped in a soup made from chicken and spices and greens. Quite good. And he was very impressed that Heather knew how to eat it and dug right in with her fingers. The pastor offered to drive us down the road a ways. But then, as we described our next planned visit to a rural community known for their work with international refugees, he decided he wanted to take us all the way and see the place for himself.

We were warmly welcomed and ate with the community and their summer volunteers. They were also welcoming some new refugees arriving from Burma that day. In the evening, we visited the houses of some other families staying there, from Chad and Burundi. I thought they wouldn’t appreciate a crowd appearing at their door, but they seemed quite pleased and welcomed everyone in. Then the singing started, traditional African songs in their native language, with everyone clapping along and sing-ing and ululation for applause.

Just before we left, the pastor stood up to say a few words and pray. He spoke in French so someone could translate to the African dialect, while Heather translated into English. He was very impressed by his experience here. I remember him saying before he drove away, “This is how it should be.”

Continued...