He had all the gravitas of a 40 year old doctor (as his father is or was) as he considered my replies with a very direct gaze, and thought about what I had said. He never once smiled as we talked. I actually found myself a little intimidated by him at the same time I was enjoying observing his demeanor. 

This conversation went on as I was leaving a house where I was repairing blinds and needing more tools from outside, and one of the 3 1/2 year old twins queried me about what I was doing and which vehicle outside was mine.  

When I saw his twin brother I noticed he was more of a little irish redhead with a quick smile and more spontaneous way of being. 

Later I found out that his dad had had a stroke within the year and is no longer employed as a doctor and may never be again. So very sad. 


There are both pluses and minuses to working on 

being aware and involved with people. The beauty and charm of glimpses of maturity in a child and the painful and premature ending of an adult's life as they knew it.

As I have thought about this experience of mine, another conversation made me think of what we know of God.  I think what we know of God is what Jesus did with others.  He empathized.  He listened.  He was intuitive.  He used annoyingly unclear and open ended parables about how people relate to each other and God.

I have to think that when he was with someone he was searching deep within.  What is the joy in there?  What is the pain in there?  What made this person the person they are today?

Why do I think about this?  Well, because I feel like a large part of my life was lived somewhat in a narcissistic fog of internal pain.  That got old and I deconstructed my life and fortunately got to put it back together in a much better way.  For me what I really have wanted in this reconstruction is to in a sense come up to speed in terms of my ability to be empathetic and intuitive about others and to do so within the ever pervasive presence of God.  

I believe the deepest and richest way to live life is in connection with others in that context of God's presence.

They gain and I gain.  A relational win/win.  

I often think about what sacrifice is and what it means to me.  Or how do all things work together for good.  And how pain and disappointment and hurt and injustice become part of anything meaningful.

For me this consideration is built into and around "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."  A cosmic undergirding of all that is.  A tapestry interwoven and inseparable from love.

Linked with this fundamental is the obvious corollary of the redemption and transformation of what was, into something completely different,  much akin to the fable of the spinning of straw into gold.

 Perhaps a mythic thread that penetrated into children's stories as the best ideas so often do.

But those beautiful and rewarding considerations don't necessarily always redeem the painful coming to terms with having been abused and then recovering from that pain.   To start the process of accepting and confronting the damage done to the soul and spirit is often daunting and a weary process.

Many roadblocks seem to occur both from within and from without.  To even begin to look at what happened so often involves sorting out the true assignment of fault.  This is often discouraging because self blaming and shame and self-loathing is so often an integral part of that process and seem such an integral part of who we are until we gain the ability to see clearly.  .

The defining moment of recovery I believe is when the anger and confusion and trauma starts to disappear into a realization that whatever happened, it sucked, it was wrong, it may have zapped out our chance of any thing like a normal childhood,  but now we can gain from the experience and let the whole process be submerged in that amazing cosmic force of turning straw into gold.

What was intended for evil gets used to bring glory to God somehow in ways that actually we may never see or even understand.

I think that is the final part of a recovery.  That gift of understanding that it wasn't all  just a nightmare but something is being redeemed and transformed into some good, and  often in someone else's life.