When Life is an Unamusing Rollercoaster

One of the pleasures of summer has always been going to an amusement park or fair. The atmosphere is fun and festive; the food, bad for you, fabulous. But I love the rides. Especially the ones that go fast and flip around.  With one exception! I have a love/hate relationship with the ride that goes around so fast you stick to the wall and the floor drops out from under you. You are standing upright but going so fast that it appears that you are flat on your back.

This past week felt like that. It was a whirlwind. Started with scary news about a relative’s health; followed by an ok update. I left one job and started a new one. One might think that would have me standing tall, but it has begun with revelations that have me on my behind. At the end of this week we have been planning for a family gathering at our place and have been learning new spin-y dance moves. My head was spinning. Literally and figuratively. More than once my tummy lurched. And I could barely find solid ground.

I also ended up with vertigo.  This is an inner ear issue that creates imbalance. Everything is nauseatingly moving, even when your eyes close. It is very much like getting off a fast moving, upside down propulsion ride. That feeling just hangs with you a while. It can make one nauseous, and pray to get off the ride. There is a moving, unstable cacophony in my head and heart, so I’m not sure Bono is right.

Uno, dos, tres, catorce
Turn it up loud, captain

Lights go down it's dark
The jungle is your head, can't rule your heart
A feeling's so much stronger than a thought        (U2 – Vertigo)

For two days and a week things were on the move. Felt like no solid ground anywhere. God, it is too loud and too unstable. HELP!

The topsy turviness was very disconcerting. And it too threw me into a tizzy. I kept thinking, “Get planted, take root.” Praying the “stone” in my inner ear, and everything else would settle down.

                     “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
                                    ― Søren Kierkegaard

“Don't be afraid, for I am with you. Don't be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.”  New Living Translation (©2007)

This week I just had to let go. Let the spiraling take me…..right into the arms of strength, hope and newness.

"Love works in miracles every day: such as weakening the strong, and strengthening the weak; making fools of the wise and wise men fools; favoring the passions, destroying reason, and in a word, turning everything - topsy-turvy."      Marguerite De Valois

I Waited Patiently for the Lord and he inclined to me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet on a rock, and established my goings. And he has put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD. “ Psalm 40:1-3

  O God who brings good things to those who hunger and thirst;
your care for us is shown in how the world is turned upside down for us;
The strong made weak; the weak made strong. All playing fields made level.

Thank you!

And you hear the cry,
you come, saying ‘do not be afraid,’
offering your very self that we might be made whole.

God of the topsy-turvy,
hear us as we pray that those who sow in tears, may reap with shouts of joy
and that the captives may know the liberation of your promise of jubilee freedom.

Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Called Up with Direction

 

Tonight is a big night for my husband. Not because he is married to me. Or because it is June 6^th and a remembrance of D-day. It is the Major League Baseball Draft. Ok! He is TiVo-ing it and watching it. He has been calculating various players for his favorite team (The Chicago Cubs, of course). For a huge baseball fan like my hubby, I guess it is interesting. All good until you consider that the MLB draft is the “least watched draft” in sports. It is not as” sexy” as football or basketball, even hockey for that matter. It will not have an immediate impact on anyone’s favorite team in 6 months time. So what is the big deal? 

As someone who was usually picked in the last groupings for most sporting activities, it is not on my interest list. But here are young men still in high or college (of course, no young woman would be offered the ridiculous salaries possibilities for sports that men get. But that is another blog topic) who have great potential in the baseball world in hitting, pitching or fielding and could command high salaries for entertaining us with their athletic prowess . Good for them, they are not left standing loving a sport that they cannot play like most of us geeks and loveable losers.  

 

 “We’d pick out the captains and we’d chose up the teams,

                                          It was always a measure of my self-esteem.
                  Cause the fastest, the strongest played shortstop and first,
                                        The last ones picked were always worst”.  (“Right Field” Peter, Paul and Mary) 

Get yourself a draft of beer or other beverage and consider this:

God does not pick anyone for last. Or conscript anyone to service. Everyone has their own gift and special talent and place in the Kingdom. And the right opportunity to serve. Do you know what your specialty is? Not yet? Ok. You are in the making – a rough copy or preliminary construction growing into what makes you – You. 

It took me a long time to realize my special gifts and even feel good about my talents. I love sports and picture myself a great player. But alas, I am a mediocre athlete at best. Give me the brain challenges though and I will be picked near the top. (Except by my friend Rich, whom I talked out of a right answer in a Biblical Trivia Challenge. Still sorry Rich!) I always rule at spectator Jeopardy. 

I don’t talk about this to urge you to find and assert your bragging rights. I simply call attention to each of us being called at the right time in the right place for the right reasons with the right gift. The Spirit is blowing where it will to create partnerships, teams and companies to build the corporate body for good.  You and I are constructed, and reconstructed, to find the flow of the Spirit and pull our load. 

 

We spend a good bit of our lives blown by the wind, and wondering why we’re not getting anywhere. Perhaps we like thinking we are in control and deciding which way, and how, to go. Walking against a strong wind slows you down.  Walking or running with the wind at your back makes you move forward faster. NASCAR fans used to say that the reason Dale Earnhardt Sr. won so many races was because he could see the draft: he could see the airflow coming off our other cars, and he would line up with that draft to aerodynamically propel him forward. What if we understood our lives in a different way: we have a special gift and power and the opportunity to fly by the current of the Holy Spirit and be propelled into a celebratory future!?

 

 Life in Christ is like that. The Holy Spirit is always blowing through our lives and communities. And our main job is to see the draft, to lick our finger and see where the wind’s blowing, what God is already up to, and then to join in that – to make sure that wind of the Spirit is at our back, that we are moving in God’s direction.

 We are never picked last. Or left as only a work in progress. God puts us in always on time, every time. We are caught up by a Spirit of love, for love and life changing purpose.

 

 

My purpose is to create and connect words and everyday living to our Spiritual nature and true home. Please challenge me with a reflection word or countering my perceptions. I would love to hear from, and be challenged by, you.  This is your page, as much as mine.