A new possibility has been revisited.
For just a hot minute (a turn of phrase which turns my stomach), while still residing in Tampa a few months ago, it seemed like a phenomenal idea to become a nun. Seems it would actually be a viable possibility, given ardent pursuit.
But I was given to wait. To come to WV/VA and do the things for family. And study. And learn. And pray. All the many prayings.
I've always been enamoured of the prospect of being a missionary. My mom curtailed the opportunity for pursuit, during the age when it would have been possible. Then, chaotic worldly-life took priority. So, now, returning to God, to Christ, to the leading of the Holy Spirit, that desire has returned.
Just for abject service.
Doesn't matter where or what.
Just to serve Him.
Only I still get so wrapped up in nonsensical natural-minded stuff that obedience is not a forte...being hard of hearing, sometimes. And He's been helping a lot, on those counts.
A lot. For which I am grateful beyond measure. For all the things.
All of them.
Was thinking it through, earlier. The song...I Surrender All.
And how I'm only a steward of anything which is within my sphere of direct "possession." That I have nothing which is my own.
The thought which took me down that path was remembrance that my life isn't my own. In any capacity.
It's taken me a shameful, deplorable amount of time to consciously yield to the abject surrender which was given during my fall from the balcony (that most recent death on record), December 16, 2006.
The memory is wholly vivid, still today. My apartment was a balcony-access second floor studio in the French Quarter. My second night at a new job, out after sun-up, and not anxious to return to a solitary abode with any quickness. I began habitation in that, the new abode, after returning to town the weekend after Thanksgiving--my friend Wendy had accompanied me on the drive in from Saint Pete, FL, and she'd stayed just long enough to catch up on things and help me feel a little more settled as living alone for the second time in my life--the former experience being terminated by the effects of Katrina.
The place gave me the creeps. There was something off about it--something reeking of death. Yet I persisted in my adamantly arrogant course of furthering my subjugation of all reality to my self-contained intellectual and spiritual will. By which I mean that, in addition to insistence that living alone was necessary, I'd taken a job in-training as cocktail server unto bartender at a strip club on Bourbon Street. The thought was that if I could desensitize myself to the moral outrage and discomfort which beset my conscience in being there, then I would have reached another pinnacle of development in the course of being able to accept and reach all and sundry to assist in whatever capacities were possible.
Mind you, my first bartending gig had been on New Year's Eve in the Venus Bar section of The Dungeon, just a few blocks away. The place isn't the same, now, but the patrons were disheartened enough that my few months' devotion there inspired me to decide upon a course of becoming a bartending psychologist. Not for the pay of a psychologist, no, but...as I told one of the bouncers after sunup as the bar had closed down, one morning--at least if I had the training, surely there'd be more I could do to help.
The whole idea of which had him utterly speechless for a few seconds, to which he just shook his head, laughed, and told me I'm crazy.
But, yeah. I'd already realized that prejudices and the sort pretty much derailed any ability to connect sufficiently as to be able to truly effect positive change. People had to be loved, as they were, for who they were, at the point of their weakest and worst moments, in order to be able to be helped.
Because it was nothing I could do. They had to be willing to change. Love alone wasn't enough--I'd learned that over the five and a half year abusive relationship which became increasingly harmful (tazers don't feel so great, but adrenaline helps to take the edge off the pain...I think...maybe it was shock, though--no pun intended...or maybe grace). He was never willing to surrender to love, in any way. So, despite initial resolution to remain with him for the long term, given my moral convictions and the nature of the relationship...it came to a point of either cutting ties or accepting an unnatural death as the natural consequence of continuation.
Grace brought me out. I see too many women in those situations who never reach a point of realization--so, it was grace.
But back to Bourbon Street.
My motives weren't entirely pure, of course. I needed a job. I knew the money bartending in strip clubs on Bourbon was ridiculous. And I knew it was the absolute worst situation I could possibly put myself in.
As to no longer be offended. By anything.
Until that bit was attained, then whatever the next would have been.
So, while I was seeking a way to tear down walls between myself and others, in ways I was also simultaneously attempting to systematically eradicate my conscience--knowingly so.
Is it any wonder that the end of my second shift ultimately culminated in death?
Yeah. Lord forgive me for such blatant idiocy and outright defiance of Your will and righteousness.
When I fell from the balcony, it was through the railing. I had leaned on it, and it just went with me--no resistance, whatsoever. Took me a moment to even register descent, so much in denial were my senses regarding the unthinkable...that the railing did not hold..
My first thought, upon acceptance of descent was how to correct for it--surely I could still leverage my weight and catch onto the posts or the floor of the balcony. But with as long as it took to accept descent, even the thought process was too late in beginning. I was too far prone as to leverage upwards, and I'd leaned at a point equidistant between the posts--they were too far from me.
Upon realizing I couldn't delay nor cease my descent, thought immediately went to one of somewhat relief--death would finally come. Given all the suicide attempts failed, prior, and all the purported desires expressed...it would finally be over.
That didn't take, though. As soon as I tried to think it with finality, a resolute outcry arose within that I did NOT want to die. By ANY means, and CERTAINLY NOT at that very moment. Indignation arose at the thought of dying in such a way, at such a time, and for that brief moment, hope flared brighter than it had in years. I had passion to live, for a moment. A yearning desire for it beyond any which had existed, possibly ever.
As being certain to die.
I realized.
Then realized that I didn't know. That I couldn't know. There was know way to know whether I'd live or die. Or in what state. And that...no matter what I wanted, one way or the other...
...it wasn't up to me.
At all.
Not even a jot.
Not one iota.
Which, was a very expansive thought. Very humbling. Completely humbling.
But in being so humbling, it was actually a relief as to fully yield the burden of an illusion of control.
So, I just thought it, so clearly. With every ounce of my being.
Whatever is Your will. I accept.
And I humbly submitted that thought, with gratitude.
And blacked out.
Next thing I knew, I was feebly attempting to struggle against being restrained. The paramedic spoke to me--there were two of them, there. The one strapping me down, and the one near my feet.
He very gently admonished me not to struggle, they were getting me help.
The next thing I knew, I awoke briefly in the emergency room. I don't remember whether it was in response to someone, or whether I beckoned someone. But I got them to call my mom. Miraculously, my cell phone still worked for a brief time--despite the ribbon wire being exposed and nearly completely severed, given that I'd partially landed on the phone. They got in touch.
I stayed conscious again either at the same interval or later, as to instruct them on where to call and who to talk to as to let work know I wouldn't be in. The nurse had to get the phone book, and stood watching me the whole time they were on the phone.
Next I knew, friends were bedside. And I couldn't figure out why my head hurt so much. Excruciating. I awoke long enough to have them get another pillow for me. It didn't help.
And the landlord came to admonish me over the paramedics having broken the iron gate to get to me. He left me with the key to the gate, after deriding me, then disappeared when a nurse sidled in to speak.
The attending neurosurgeon came to talk to me at one point, but he didn't have much to tell me. Multiple contusions. Both frontal lobes, and my left-side temporal. With the occipital as the place of direct impact. Stitches along the occipital place, cracked skull. He couldn't explain how I was alive. It didn't make sense to him.
Regaining ordinal comprehension took a little while. I know the Lord guided me in books to pick up, once I could walk well enough as to be transported cross-country for convalescence. Sudoku, which was completely new, brought awareness that numbers no longer had any sort of viable relationship with one another, aside of the one which recollection of necessary relationship insisted upon.
1 and 2 have a definite relationship. Sequential. Ordinal.
It took a while to get that back.
Same as with math.
And the ability to comprehend strings of words.
The first time I attempted to read one of the books, the experience was wholly confusing. No matter how many times I looked at each of the words, they had no comprehensive, cumulative meaning. Each existed wholly distinct of the other, with no discernable relation to any surrounding.
Recollection of what the process of contextual comprehension entailed, and given concerted effort, I was able to read again.
Word recall was next to impossible. I would know that there were things, specific things, which I wanted to say. But I could never remember the words which would say them. Only by the grace of being prior able to process even more quickly was the severe delay made increasingly unnoticeable to others who knew me. This, as I would have to continually rewrite every thing I wanted to say, mentally making substitutions as best as possible for words which were no longer accessible.
I know it's been grace. All the way.
By all rights, when that fall killed me (as it did, twice within the time it took for the friend who'd walked me home to miraculously resuscitate me, then again when the paramedics arrived)...they shouldn't have been able to resuscitate me using CPR.
So, I know it was God's will. And had He not led me to a point of absolute surrender, along the course of the fall...?
Some days I'm made more aware of it than others. Today, though...today I had to be reminded. People question my ways and my motives, sometimes, but that can't in any way be a deterrant to what is given to be done. So long as the absolute certainty that it's God's will for me to do something, there must be no backing down. And there will be no backing down, by His grace.
As the pastor tonight said it, "To have a revelation of Christ means there is no changing your mind."
Once you know Him, there's only surrender...
...further surrender, repentance, transformation, renewing, sanctification. Into His righteousness. In His Righteousness.
Unto holiness. As existing in His holiness.
...so, I'd been thinking about what I'm supposed to say when people ask me certain questions. And it's the same--don't worry about something that's not happening right now.
But having a renewed revelation of that balcony experience...?
...when people do ask me certain things, or imply certain things...when they're unable to understand certain aspects of how things are for me...and when they've ridiculed...? It's okay.
Just...in all ways, my life isn't my own--I surrendered it years ago. During my first mission trip, singing the song, "Here I Am," when it became real to me. Then, again, on the balcony. And again, four years ago. And increasingly, since there.
And, still, I must surrender my life every day.
Because it was bought and paid for, at the highest price. The blood of my Savior was shed that I might be, and am, redeemed. So, my life isn't my own, in any way.
And every time I've died that He's delivered me (including last week--accidental poisoning...)? ...just further reinforces that this life isn't mine, in any capacity. Not in any way, shape, or form.
The only thing which is mine is Jesus. Yeshua HaMashiach. Christ. My Salvation, my Kinsman-Redeemer, my Lord, my Beloved Counselor, and Everlasting Father. Wonderful. My Best Friend and Only Refuge, who truly is closer than a brother. My Strength, Peace, Truth, Life, and Deliverer.
He is all I have.
He is all I want.
He is ALL I need.
And so long as that's more true, everyday, this life will be counted as utmost joy.
To walk in the revelation of His love is sublime.
To be humbled by the magnitude of His grace and mercy is divine.
To know Him is to love Him.
To be counted worthy of persecution on His behalf will be an honor.
To know Him is to know Love.
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