*** Scroll down for parts 1, 2, and 3
Three weeks after my dad passed away, my friend Darilynn called to see if I needed some tlc. With an open and grateful heart, I said yes, and we made plans for her to come over that afternoon. When she graciously offered to bring lunch for us, I ditched the polite “no-thank-you-so-as-not-to-impose” response that formed on my tongue and simply replied, “Yes, that would be wonderful.” She and I had been together through some losses before. I felt no need to pretend I had it all together or make things look better than they were.
An hour and a half later, she showed up at my door, a large bowl filled with homemade salad for lunch, fresh zucchini, and yellow squash from her garden to share with our family, and a hug that invited the release of the tears held loosely behind my eyelids. She dished up lunch as I settled my toddler in bed for his afternoon nap.
We spread out at the dining room table and chatted over lunch. Just small talk, nothing big. The gift of normalcy did my heart good, and I ate with an interest I had not had in days. The delicious salad worked its magic, and before long, I felt strength entering my body.
After the plates were emptied and put in the sink, I suggested we take our topped-off glasses of iced tea outside and sit at the patio table on the deck. It was a gorgeous early August afternoon—not too hot, just warm enough for iced tea to feel refreshing. For a few minutes, neither of us spoke. It was a comfortable silence, each of us sipping from our glass, appreciating the quiet of the peaceful afternoon. I pulled the peace into my lungs and held it for a moment before releasing my breath in a gentle sigh. At that moment, a realization startled me. God was there. Just right there, sitting with us in that pocket of peace. He was quiet, but the effect of His presence was palpable.
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Sometimes, we complicate the idea of the presence of God. Even in my head while typing that phrase, I pictured myself saying the words aloud, chin dipped toward the floor, tongue pressing down toward the back of my throat to make my voice deeper. (Picture James Earl Jones.) Like I’m making a deeply religious statement about the mysteries of life. But God being with us was never meant to be a mystery. The presence of God is, simply put, God being present with us. It’s not mystical, not magical. It’s actually fairly basic. It is literally the fundamental element of our entire existence. (That doesn’t make it sound mysterious at all, does it?!)
But it is simple. In its most basic form – I’m talking preschool level here – God created us. He loves His creation. He enjoys being with His creation. God is with His creation. Now, let’s get personal. God created me. He loves me. God enjoys being with me. God is with me.
I’m telling you – it’s a game changer.
The knowledge that God is truly hanging out with me during my regular day, just there with me in whatever I am doing, changed things. I started to actually see Him more. The more I saw Him, the more I recognized Him. The more I recognized Him, the more I knew Him. The more I knew Him, the more I expected Him. And the more I expected Him, the more I saw Him. (See the circle?)
For many years, during the time we lived in Maine, my friend Stephanie and I would meet once a week for coffee. On a regular basis you could find us enjoying coffee at the Tim Horton’s on Alfred Road in Biddeford, Maine. (Tim Hortons is no longer there, and the day they closed was a day of mourning for us.) Sometimes, we would meet after dropping our kids off at school for a blissful hour or two of grown-up time, and sometimes, we would have our littles there with us. Whatever the case, it was a date we rarely missed. You could say our friendship was built during those weekly times of sharing hearts, lots of laughter, and sometimes tears. Oh, and the coffee. Yes. That too.
Stephanie would often get the same drink order a few weeks in a row and then change it up from time to time. But me? Once I found a drink I fell in love with, that was it for me. That became the drink I wanted every time. Enter the delightfully desserty, medium, iced cappuccino supreme, made the “original” way, with cream instead of chocolate milk, and a shot of caramel. I remember when they started making the iced-capp supreme with chocolate milk instead of cream. I immediately noticed something was off and asked about it. The manager told me they had changed the recipe, but for me, they could keep making it the “original” way. It got to the point that I didn’t even have to order. When the employees saw me come in, they made my drink without asking. They had gotten to know me and knew what I wanted. It was all there, right inside the circle of seeing, recognizing, knowing, and expecting.
In much the same way, I started to recognize God showing up in my daily life. There He was, floating on the words of a conversation, warming my face with sunshine, taking my breath away with a show-stopping sunset, filling my mind with scriptures in the darkness of night.
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I once heard a therapist say that when we focus all our attention on a problem, it will appear bigger to us because our solo focus enlarges it like a magnifying glass. Magnification is the process of enlarging the appearance of something, not the actual size of it. So, as we sit and stare at a problem, it will become bigger and bigger because it has been given the entirety of our focus. And in giving it our focus, we are no longer able to see things outside of it.
She gestured to the open window in her office a few feet away from me. It was a beautiful spring day in late April, and a gentle breeze stirred the crisp white curtains, the faint aroma of the flowers growing outside the building wafting through the room. Birds chirped from the trees bordering the parking lot. The temperature was the perfect blend of warm and cool that on any other day would have been inviting me, begging me, to spread out on my porch swing with a good book.
But I couldn’t see it, couldn’t recognize it- until she interrupted my focus.
THIS is what I could see from my vantage point that day: Four walls and a door. I knew that there were windows, but I paid them no attention and did not notice the open one. I sat in a chair with a tiny round table to the left of me. The room felt small, almost claustrophobic. I could not get comfortable. I kept wondering if I should sit with my legs crossed. That’s my normal go-to pose. (As I sit here typing at the outdoor patio of a local Starbucks I have them crossed.) But does that seem too uncaring, too relaxed? I felt nervous but was trying to joke and laugh and act like I was perfectly comfortable. I remember feeling the need, almost crave, to fix something. I needed to walk out of the office that day a different person. Or at least, with different circumstances.
I had it all wrong. The narrative. The story I told myself. Oh, don’t get me wrong, much of it was true…but also true was that my focus was all skewed, hyper-focused on my fear, my losses, my pain. In my narrative, I left no room for God. No expectation of Him.
It’s been a few years since that eye-opening moment, and I can tell you with certainty that there is ALWAYS another story. No matter what. No matter how the darkness prevails, how lost the cause, how broken your heart, how dead your dream.
Please know this, my friend—I’m not saying that there aren’t things that are final. Sometimes, things can happen that are so devastatingly wrong that they crush your heart to dust. Even as I write this, I am walking through the hardest season in my life. It’s a very long season. And I am more than tired. But there IS another story at play here. And that story speaks hope in the darkest of times. It’s the reality of God being present with his people every single moment of every single day.