I had an epiphany on the M50 yesterday. I suddenly wanted to do something different. I wanted to start following the boat. It was on a flatbed, an old cranky boat with ripped starboard.
It was older than a starboard boat. I remember playing a game called Port or Starboard as a child with bruised shins. I don’t think the game came from centuries ago but I think the boat might. There were no Klingons on the starboard bow.
I was driving so I don’t have a picture. Smudge tried and failed to get an in-focus picture of the boat but got a lovely side view of my melanoma and double chin. We had been to the hospital and had new hope and a new doctor. Things could change.
We discussed what the doctor said and the procedures he wanted to perform on Smudge. I mentioned the daily injections and that is when he hit me. Not literally… he said he might not go back to college.
The boat came passed, we were going to Dundrum to find Jamie’s restaurant for a massive treat. But I started following the boat. And I asked him, “shall we just follow the boat?”
He said, “we can’t do that, we have to go home, you have things to do.” But I just kept on following that boat. Every now and then he tried to persuade me that going home would be okay. But just for that moment, I did not want to deal with church stuff, home stuff, college stuff. I just wanted to follow what looked like a Viking longboat and never deal with my stuff again.
I had been studying Psalm 46, intending to write a sermon. But it all went south, yesterday. I know God is with me, I know I can be still and let God work in situations, I know he is ever-present and I know being Christian does not mean everything becomes easy.
But just for that moment, I wanted to follow the boat and never go home. A few weeks ago I was at a coach station in a European city and I {almost} got on a bus going anywhere else but home. Then I was at an airport and I wanted to fly away to anywhere.
There was just so much to think about, so much to deal with and now Smudge may not go back to university. My lovely ring-fenced days off are gone. Hospitals, doctors and canteen coffee loom on the horizon and beluga caviar. I just want to follow the boat. And the empty nest Sean & I were looking forward to became technical once more.
I thought of the story told of the God who dances in potato chips and I remembered. I remembered who I am, I remembered why I was at college, why I had been fired, why I bend like a reed to help Smudge, why I have become protective of people, why I have been placed where I have been placed.
The transient thought of following the boat passed and I turned to go home. Smudge went to sleep. All is quiet, all is well. “Be still and know I am God.”
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