The Threshold

My unemployment insurance had nearly run out. In my prayers, I mentioned to God how I’m a square peg that needed a square to fit into. Only God knew how I would be able to steadily exchange my time for money and be happy. I found myself in a familiar spot of human despair and logic mixed with supernatural hope in the Lord. Before I went into the writing project, which was going to be very long-term, I sincerely needed to be more balanced with my time. I needed to trust fully in God’s timing. If He wanted to balance me a bit more in life, He would. I longed for His choice of work for me to do that would glorify Him. Whatever it was, it would be added to my box labeled work experience.

*****

It was still early June 1996, and summer was near. I was aware of my age and how soon I would be forty-three years old. Every one of the nearly forty jobs I’d had had taught me things. I had a lot of little pieces that I had learned, but they weren’t adding up to anything that could be used to make money. My body was starting to fail me, with increased chronic pain. Seeing my mom’s pain increase made me think I had a family problem with pain. My look into the next decade was the same view as I always had: wait and see. What else could I do? It was an attitude labeled years ago in the diary as “time will tell.”

At the crossroads of my thoughts loomed the huge growing imperative called “writing a book.” Similar to diarist and lyricist, this time all my work for free also came with a label. Creative/narrative nonfiction novelist—I liked it. The title had to have a good ring to it for the enormous undertaking it would be. Again in my contemplations, I saw those decades of covered wagons carrying my boxes of memories. The caravan of experience circled as if to make a stand, Lord willing. He was at the center of my hope in what was going to become another unique struggle. My storytelling was going to contain a mixture of past secular experience and then a serious growing Christian life. I needed a big brand-new box of steady employment that only God could fill. I was without any direction for work, and yet I had faith in the Lord’s leading. As I wrote in the diary of my hope to follow and honor God, a trusting calm came through my eyes. Forming the words, “Be still and know that I am God,” I placed the familiar reassurance of Psalm 46:10 on the diary page. Waiting upon the Lord is a beautiful focused act of conscious communion. I voiced, “Be still and know that I am God.”

During that bout of heavy thinking, I was led into the direction of something totally uncharacteristic of me. I felt the need to go in a new course of helping others. I hoped the idea was valid, because it was strange to think about it. The prospect lingered and felt like I knew for sure that the Lord was positively leading me in that new way. Helping others was a good Christ-honoring deed. It was more than a feeling; it was the truth. Because it was atypical for me, like so many other things I had done, I began to investigate with interested confidence.

I answered an ad in the help wanted section of the newspaper for a residential habilitation (res-hab) aide. My initial phone call discovered that it was a job working with the mentally challenged. A company was in need of a reliable worker to help bring the individuals into the community for access and involvement. Sitting outside watching some clouds pass, I thought about it; I had no experience or skill, just an inquisitive desire to seek God’s will. I was shocked at first to find myself at that door of a new opportunity. Pacing calmed my thoughts, and I stood in the sun wondering. What was I to do with those with a traumatic brain injury or those suffering from mild retardation, autism, and other learning challenges? I paced.

Then the answer to my question came like a slow-motion bolt of lightning. I remembered my own serious head injury and amnesia twenty-two years earlier. Then when I found out fifteen years ago from Melissa that I was dyslexic. I was certain that I too was developmentally challenged. I was once one of those people in critical condition that deserved the opportunity to do better, and God took my hand to lead me at that time. God directed my every thought and motion. Though I was first brought low in my memory loss and began the diary to capture thoughts, He then made me well through the writing. I not only survived; I traveled much farther and lived much more than I had hoped to. By grace I was given the highest of all positions as a child of God. Perhaps in the will of God, now I could somehow be a catalyst to help others.

*****

Children Someday

Monday six thirty please, please get ready.
Don’t make me say it again.
Party is over, school bus is closer.
I love you, you’re my best friend.

Movies and malls, for the marriage that falls,
Love for the Children Someday.
Video games reign to replace the pain,
Time for the Children Someday.

Half a home here, half a home there,
Kids get the best of both worlds.
Broken love holds, legal love owes,
Kids get the worst of both worlds.

Mom reads alone, waiting by the phone.
Dad gets to have all the fun.
Squeezing in the time, fairy-tale rhyme
Can’t put back what’s undone.

Movies and malls, for the marriage that falls,
Love for the Children Someday.
Video games reign to replace the pain,
Time for the Children Someday.