The Last To Know

            I am the last to know.  So often the obvious escapes me.

            Reading a book by Jan Johnson, an author I discovered quite by accident—one of her titles was advertised as a free Kindle book—led to reading another one of her books because it was available for free check-out to Amazon Prime members.  Invitation to the Jesus Life:  Experiments in Christlikeness and When the Soul Listens:  Finding Rest and Direction in Contemplative Prayer describe my interior life, especially the gradual growth of the past four years.  I have to smile:  God has led me into the heart of spiritual disciplines without me knowing it   

If I’m bragging on anyone, it is on God.  I guess he likes to lead us right into experiencing him even if we don’t recognize his methods.

            I believe it started with a simple decision made back in my Colby, Kansas apartment after I left my husband of six years in January 2008.  I was tired of secrets and lies, tired of not being true to myself.  I didn’t even know what I liked let alone what I believed.  I started where I was and worked on what resonated with me.  At the time, it was recovery literature, in which I discovered the depths of my co-dependency.  Living alone for the first time in decades, I also discovered simple preferences:  lots of lights on, blankets and hot tea to ward off the chill of winter evenings, soft music in the background when I was lonely.

            I started to pay attention to my heart’s desires.  They told me to move to Whidbey Island.  An impossible dream became a reality.  Within six months I had resigned my secure job and left Kansas to live in a cabin in the woods.  I never would have figured that the realization of my writing dreams (i.e., the freedom to write) would involve sharing Mom’s care with my youngest brother and becoming solvent because of my sister. 

            But God had other soul-opening avenues for me along the way, too:  Whidbey Presbyterian Church, a wonderful Stephen Minister who has become a cherished friend, The Enchanted Flute Choir, and private flute lessons, to name a few.

            Meanwhile, in the quiet lifestyle and relative freedom of my early retirement, God continued his mystical soul work.  I found a bubbling spring of creativity that spilled over on a daily basis, but it was not what I expected.  I had planned to research and write about my great-grandmother, perhaps some sort of historical fiction based on her diaries during the years she taught in rural Montana.  What I ended up doing was chronicling my new life on Whidbey Island.  In that writing, I became more attuned to hearing God in the present moment.  He is the one who releases creativity and lets me enjoy words, experience the surprising flow between thought and keyboard, inhabit the current sentence.   I learned to listen to His soft sweeps of inspiration—often in the form of a single opening sentence—and hurry to my keyboard to follow the words from beginning to end:  writing that feels timeless and free.

            Did I know, really know, that I was learning to pay attention to God?  And better, that I was learning to dialogue with God?  No.

            Prayer has always a problem for me.  I’ve never felt comfortable with demanding things (or even requesting them) from God.  I interpreted that discomfort as a lack of faith.   Admittedly, I am still clueless about how God uses prayer to actually make a difference in our own hearts and the lives of others.  What I do know is that somehow he has changed my prayerlessness into prayerfulness:   spending time with him, giving myself up to him, praying within the routines of the day for whomever he brings to mind.

            Perhaps it is in the heat of suffering and climate of contemplative prayer that he forges compassion.  Sometimes I get glimpses of truth about other people that fill me with sorrow/ longing/joy—and the desire to be an instrument of his love.  “Allow me to bless someone today” is my heart cry, right along with “Let me receive your blessing as well.”

            Two nights ago, it was early morning insomnia and a nudge from God that drove me to my keyboard at three in the morning to record that first sentence—“I am the last to know”--and keep writing.   Today, it is the quiet of Christmas Sunday afternoon that invites me to rein in those early morning ramblings into readable form.

What to do with these words?  Post them, of course.