Behold, I AM ALIVE!

The past few days have been strangely troubling for me. Mostly it was matters of my own making. Some of them I probably just flat made up. But suffer I have, silly as it may have been. It's one of those times when I just wanted to be invisible awhile. Maybe there's inside work to be done, the kind that can't happen when we're too well connected with the world.

Pastor Pam diagnosed it as tied down, tied up, tied tight. Strung out by idols that bind and strap one intended for flight. We had just shared together in the service of death and resurrection for our beloved brother Rev. Jack Klein. Rick Edens, co-pastor of United Church of Chapel Hill, wove a fascinating sermon about "the tethers being loosened." He reminded us that the waning of the body is also the loosening of the tethers that bind us to earth. Jack, he said, was one who went about un-tying tethers that limit and cripple people: poverty, disgrace, closets, despair. Now his own tethers have been loosened and he is free! The heavens have been torn open to unleash the holy and receive him home.

So here am I, fit as a fiddle (I pray). Yet I'm bound by my own bitter bindings to goals and expectations and assumptions that God never asked of me. Others did. Think Aslan sacrificed on stone table. Only, see that gorgeous beast strategically strapping himself there. Humiliated, he cannot free himself. Only Grace can untie him.

Pam prescribed postrating myself before God, humbly offering up every idol, yet without dramatic fanfare of all my glorious shortcomings. Simply submit to the holy untying of my knotty web.

It's worth a tangled try.

Today is the 53rd anniversary of my birth into this world. I celebrated it by Coming to the Middle, offering up the Body and Blood of Christ, and participating in the dying to new life. I prayed for Ann and her family grieving and letting go of dear Jack. I remembered my brother-in-law John who buried his precious dad yesterday in West Texas. I thanked God for my husband who brought me breakfast in bed -- a tray laden with waffles and sweet peaches, juice, milk, and coffee, and my crystal bud vase (a treasure bought in Waterford, Ireland where Mom and I visited 26 years ago) holding her favorite rose: Tropicana. And I gave thanks for my girly in Costa Rica who sang to me as I sipped OJ. And for my dad who called to tease me about whose birthday this is and when Columbus Day is. And for friends who blessed me, including Mrs. Blackmon in Texas, my 9th-grade homemaking teacher, who never forgets.

In the shower I claimed the blessing of health with true gratitude, receiving again the washing of regeneration, remembering my baptism. While thanking God for conceiving me, I received the gift: I had just outlived my mother!

Exactly two months from mine today will be Mama's birthday. She died four days short of her 53rd birthday. It was a nasty, sneaky, tenacious cancer that drug her down death's cellar door -- the same sneaky demon that took her one sister, taunted the other one most recently, and threatened nine years ago to kidnap me.

But I am not dead. I am here to celebrate my birthday! These four difficult days have been days of grace and promise. I did not die before my birthday. My mother's story is not my story. I am alive!

I believe again: every day is a gift. But these four ... they broke the curse.
Let the tethers be loosened, child, and live! Halleluia!