Everyone has their own journey, their own experiences, and their own meeting God moments. As a human being, there comes a time in our lives when we face our mortality and understand that our time and presence is limited on this rotating rock. We finally see how small we are compared to the vastness of the universe. Or we finally understand the physics that the world doesn’t revolve around us. Yet “our” worlds do revolve around us, we are at the center of it, and everything that happens to us or comes from us, stems from the center of our being. We don’t experience what’s going on across the universe – only what is within our scope, our reach, and our influence. Some of us have a very limited reach, while others have a vast one, but we all have one, even if it’s only within ourselves.
I’ve heard the name of God my whole life. Most often in a
damning expression when something went wrong or someone was angry, or when
danger was present, which was during most of my childhood. God was damned about every four to five words
that escaped the cigarette or joint-ridden mouths of my parents. The concept
that while God gave life to all things, my parents were ultimately responsible for
my birth, and they alone had the right to take that life from me should they
choose. I do believe the words were, “I brought you into this world, and if I
damned-well please, I’ll take you out of it.” Have you really thought about the
phrase ‘damned-well’? That’s an
oxymoron. Nothing damned is well.
I’ve had a few meeting God moments, but one stands out in
particular. It wasn’t when I died after
being attacked by a Doberman Pincher at age 5, or when I rode on top of a car
through a barbed-wire fence, or when I fell off the back of a pick-up and got
ran over, or any of those life-threatening moments. No, Meeting God moment that
sticks out to me was a happy moment, a peaceful moment, a vision of beauty and
grace, surrounded by nature and probably one of the first instances of human
love.
I was about five years old. From my life time-line, this was
some time after the burned-down house, the place where my little yellow canopy
bed was destroyed and where I was attacked by the dog following my fifth birthday,
and some time before we moved to Texas where I started Kindergarten, so
sometime before my 6th birthday.
We lived on what my parents refer to as ‘the farm’. I’m not sure what the farm really looked like
because my memories are brittle pieces. I do remember some scenes, such as a
log shack with a fold up cot me and my brothers would play in, until we got bed
bugs. This is the place I learned about
chiggers, muddy wells, horses, and how to hoe a vegetable garden, and the first
time I heard the name William Smith. I’m
still not sure who he was, only that he was on the farm with my family, had
dark-curly hair, and couldn’t ride a horse.
Next door lived an old black couple. I wish I could remember
their names, but I can’t. I do, however,
remember their hands, and their smiles, and their chickens, and their
red-painted barn. I remember happiness
riding on the back of an old Chevy pick-up truck, (my father hated Fords – so it
isn’t ironic that I grew up loving them) through bumpy, dusty, red clay dirt
roads and mazes of corn. To this day I still love riding down winding dirt
roads among corn fields. Our old neighbors had a bunch of chickens that ran
around the yard. I loved chasing them, feeding them, picking their eggs, and
then running from them as they chased me back.
It was carefree fun. It was a moment I got to just be kid. I didn’t have
many of those moments, but that was one of them. The old lady, who I will call Henrietta, told
me stories about the farm, about her animals, about love, and about God. I remember her telling me that God was
watching me, and watching over me, and sending angels down to protect me. It as
a nice thought because I always felt danger.
I remember my Meeting God moment. I was lying in the deep green grass next to Fred
and Henrietta’s red barn. A tin pail sat
beneath a water spigot that dripped crystal drops in a constant rhythm,
creating a harmony with the universe, with the birdsong, with the wind that
swayed the tops of trees. It was like
the universe in that moment was singing a universal song and they had allowed
me to hear them, to see them worshiping in harmony with the sun, the grass,
the wind, the trees, the air, the animals, all of life and all of nature, and
even with a little five-year old girl lying in the grass, touching their cool with
the tips of her little fingers. I turned
my head to the side and watched a tiny ant meander through the forest of blades
and wondered if he knew he was being watched, if he realized how small he was
to the world I knew? Wondered if this was how God watched over me?
I
looked into the sky above me, realized how small I was in the universe, and
tried to imagine the world beyond the clouds, beyond space, beyond everything –
not in distance, but in reality, beyond deeper than what we could see, and
wondered if that’s where God lived and if he could see me on this side of the
veil, to see little ol’ me lying in the grass. I can still feel the warm tears
slide out the corners of my eyes and trickle down the side of my face as I
yearned to know THAT God. Not the god of
my father, not the god that damned everything, not the god that people were
killing for, but the God that all the universe was apart, the God that watched
over me and sent his angels to protect me. I wanted to know him with all of my
being, all of my heart, and all of my hope. I believe I met God in that moment.
I believe that He heard me, and He touched me, and He smiled because He loved
his creation, and his creation loved him back.
After that moment there would be many angry times, hurt
times, and lots and lots of doubting. There still are because life is hard, it
is complicated, and it’s formed with many different levels and layers. But,
anytime I stray too far from my faith, I’m always drawn back to that moment,
back to that Meeting of God, and I’m reminded of that experience and my faith
is restored. I still have lots of doubts. I still believe with my whole heart
that we’ve got it all wrong, for the most part, when it comes to God. I hate
religion. I hate the things men do in
the name of God. I hate the way humanity treats one another. But, sometimes I get a glimpse of the beauty
of nature, of the universe, and even of humanity and am reminded that God is
love – and love (not the world’s version of love, but pure love) is not of this
world, is not of nature, but it is something more, something beyond the veil,
something I can’t really describe because it must be experienced to
understand. I’m never afraid to meet God,
but of man I am terrified.
The Farm was a brief happy moment in my life. I always think of it with a smile every time
I smell burning wood, or see a corn field, or a red barn, or chickens, or a tin
pail, or a water spigot, or a horse.
Many nightmares follow the Farm, but that’s another part of this story.
This is where I met God.
This is the story. This is my story. This is my life.
Till next time,
~T.L. Gray ©2017
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