Witness to Withness

God

Do you hear me God? I am speaking to you.
I have been caught in this interior nightmare.
Come out of hiding, let me see you.
Well why didn't you tell me you were with me in me?


What a Friend we have in Jesus.(A place where you can know and be with God.)


         God is one of those constants in my life that never leaves. God is with me even when I have trouble being with myself. As I wrestled with demons in my dark night of the soul, God was there preparing me, even though I did not know it at the time. I look back and realize my understanding of God changed dramatically as I was forced to deal with the reality of Mental illness. It was nothing I could run from anymore. In my fear of becoming emotionally ill after my brother's diagnosis of Schizophrenia when I was in my teen I was captured fighting my way out. God was there.

         My only regret is that I did not talk with people about what was going on inside me. I was afraid that I would be rejected. I prayed to God and sought a word that would affirm me and sustain me. It became harder and harder. My walls of feeling I was this tough Christian who could overcome anything came tumbling down when I was a Junior in college. This was five years after I discovered I could not heal my brother of his illness. I found out the only thing I could do was give it over to God.

         It was during my worst times, when no one seemed to be there for me that I discovered God's presence was most real. Maybe Godly people were absent, God never was. It was all I thought about. I entered the biblical story in ways that I never had as a college student studying to be a minister. I participated with God in the biblical narrative. I was God in the story of Revelation as a Witness, I was in the story of creation as I wrestled about the meaning of what it meant for a man and woman to be together. I was with Jesus as I interfaced with someone who called himself Jesus. At different times I was Jonah being swallowed by a whale, the pioneer of what it meant to be a new creation in Christ and in a fitting climax, as I looked in the mirror, someone who was created in the image of God. I was rich even if I felt poor. Where was everyone else? I thought I knew what friendship was and now I was not sure. If people did not seem to be there for me how could I be with them.

         God was my friend. I guess at this point I need to shift to another section of my memoir that I call friendship. It has been a daunting task to reestablish a healthy understanding of friendship in relation to people of the human race. The foundations were there. Jerry Stebenne, a man with muscular dystrophy was my first teacher of what friendship looked like and was the precursor of what would follow. I have no question that God sent him into my life and me into his. Let the adventure of discovering what friendship means begin. It begins with knowing God is there. God is my friend.