My house is at the end of a cul-de-sac. This cul-de-sac is not the one you find in carefully groomed suburban streets with circular pavement and a small green island in the center that cars can roll around. No, my cul-de-sac is what the term means, a dead end. The road simply stops beyond my house. There is no other place to go. You must turn around.
My home is an older home, a brick Cape Cod, with a side and back yard nestled against woods that slope down to a creek whose banks attract deer, raccoon, and now coyote –– I hear them at night. The woods are full of all manner of birds –– sparrows, swallows, robins, cardinals, juncos, blue jays, chickadees, and now that summer is here, hummingbirds. Woodpeckers are common and occasionally I even see a Pileated. At night, I hear the call of the Barred Owl. In daylight, soaring overhead I see vultures and hawks. A cry of alarm from the other birds alerts me when the Red Shoulders are on the hunt.
This property is a little sanctuary, something I have known since day one, when I signed the papers making it my own. But there is another perspective that I never considered until now. I live at a dead end. And what would make me think that?
Worry. Anxiety. Fear.
OLD HOUSES
The age of my home is such that I am finding more and more repairs are needed to maintain it. The latest: the costs of rebuilding my sagging wooden front porch and my deteriorating back deck ran more than I expected. Last year, it was a new roof. These outlays of cash are causing me anxiety.
I live frugally, and have tried to be a good steward of my money. However, as with many people, I am feeling the pinch of high inflation. And now that I am in my elder years, I worry. Will I have enough money to live on the rest of my life? Did I save enough so I will have the financial resources I need to the end of my days?
Lately, I have felt the answer may be no.
I know fear of running out of money is not where I need to be. But here I am, and fear has moved right in, making itself at home on the couch.
A NEW IMAGE
There is a Christian poster depicting a set of single footprints in the sand, representing how Jesus carries his believers in times of worry and fear. It holds great meaning for many people. But my experience has led me to a new image, and that is of a canoe. And, no, God is not the canoe. The canoe is my own resources, capabilities, wisdom, and gifts that can carry me.
That may sound as heresy, but I don’t think so. I am a creative, intelligent woman who can paddle her own canoe. That doesn’t mean I am to paddle away from God. Instead, it means I am to learn to watch the waters and read the currents that God has put before me and navigate through them in partnership with God. Indeed, God is in the canoe with me.
As with any good partner, God is where I turn for support, recommendations, feedback. And God relies on me to carry out what the Spirit of Life desperately needs –– without a body of its own –– to be carried into the world.
THE CALL OF THE SPIRIT
Richard Hauser writes that the … “goal of Christian spirituality is to recognize and respond to the continual interior movements of the Spirit, for the Spirit will always lead us toward greater union with Christ and greater love and service of God and others.”1
I think if we remove Hauser’s reference to Christianity, we will find the same true within any authentic spiritual practice. We need to respond to the call of Spirt within that leads us closer to God, as God follows us. This is part of the great mystery I find in God. As I engage more with God, God follows my lead. Ours is a circular dance.
Just as my great nieces are now too big for me to pick up, I was never meant to stay a child – forever carried. I am to walk on my own. Just not alone.
I remember the last time I picked up the father of these two girls, my nephew. He was with me while I was visiting friends who lived on the Ohio River. There we stood on the banks, the muddy waters lapping nearby, and he suddenly felt shy.
“Hold me,” he said reaching up his arms.
He was seven years old, already pushing the physical limits of what I could handle. But I bent over and picked him up, steadying myself with a wide stance, my feet a good two feet apart to balance his weight, his chunky gym shoes banging against my knees. And I knew as clear as anything that I would never hold my nephew like that again. And I haven’t. He grew up, just as any parent expects any child to do. Our creator is no exception.
FOLLOWING EACH OTHER
Last year, I took my financial records to that boy. He grew up to be a financial planner. We sat in his screened-in porch off the back of his house and reviewed my retirement plan. In guiding me, he follows my wishes in terms of investments that match my values. I follow his direction as he follows mine.
So now that I find myself at a dead end with fear, I know what I must do. I live in a paradise, but it is at the end of the road. And because it is at the end of the road, I need to turn around. There is a whole world to explore beyond my door, and that is just what I am going to do, leaving fear useless on the couch. I am taking the beauty that is mine out into this larger world. And as I do this, I know God is right there, following me.
FOR REFLECTION: How do you interact with your own fears? How often do your worries actually come true? How often do they not? What does that tell you?
1 Richard J. Hauser, In His Spirit: A Guide to Today’s Spirituality (Beacon: 2011), 24.
Top image: Pixabay/youngpreacher.
Side image: Pixabay/Robert Jones.
