My Turn in the Ant Pile

Twenty-two years ago, I noticed some pain on the left side of my jaw.  I had been a teeth grinder all my life.  I still remember my dad waking me up in the middle of the night when I was a kid and we were at a hotel for a night on a road trip.

“You’re grinding your teeth,” he said to me.

Not that there was anything I could do about it.

So I imagine when that pain started twenty-plus years ago, that I thought it was TMJ.  It probably also occurred to me that I had a wisdom tooth back there that had been giving me problems since I was sixteen.  Every now and then it would decide that it was time for it to push through and fully erupt and I’d be in pain for a while until it realized it wasn’t happening and chilled back down.

But this particular pain in 2004 continued to build over the days until I woke one morning with pain radiating down my jaw and something about that—the radiating—told me I probably needed to see the dentist sooner rather than later.

I got an emergency appointment, and he led me back to a room I had never seen before and looked like something they only used for prisoners.  He sat me back in the chair and took out a metal pick and then barely brushed the top of my wisdom tooth, the part you could see hiding in the gum tissue.

I about hit the ceiling.

Long story short—the tooth was infected.  He put me on amoxicillin and handed me off to an oral surgeon who said yes that tooth and my other two wisdom teeth needed to come out.  I made plans to take off that day from work, enlisted my grandmother to drive to and from the appointment and stay with me that day while the twilight sleep wore off.

You can have everything planned and then, almost a literal act of God happens. 

This was Florida, 2004.  It was a heck of a year for hurricanes.  About two days before my scheduled surgery, Brevard County issued mandatory evacuation orders for everyone living on the barrier islands where Hurricane Frances was predicted to make landfall.  I lived in Cape Canaveral, about a block from the beach.  My oral surgeon was on Merritt Island, also a barrier island.  I called their office and told them we needed to reschedule.

And then I evacuated to my uncle’s house in Orlando.

Hurricane Frances made landfall near Vero Beach, Florida as a Category 2 hurricane.  When it was safe to do so, I headed home.

My new appointment to have my wisdom teeth out was scheduled for a few weeks later.

Meteorologists began watching a new disturbance in the Atlantic, a storm that would become known as Hurricane Jeanne.  She was headed in the exact same direction as Frances.

Fortunately, I was able to get my wisdom teeth out a few days before evacuating for Jeanne.  Jeanne wound up making landfall almost exactly where Frances had, but as a Category 3 storm.

I remember sitting in my uncle’s house, eating my post-surgery meal of crackers and cheese in a can.

Tomorrow morning, I will be having a root canal on the tooth that used to be neighbors with that impacted wisdom tooth.  I feel like apologizing to my teeth.  I’m sorry I have a small mouth.  I’m sorry you don’t fit.  I’m sorry I grind my teeth.  I’m sorry you’re always hurting.

I am fairly confident that no hurricane will disrupt the procedure.

But as I tell everyone, no matter what happens, you know I will have a story to tell.  Stories are how I make meaning out of my life.  Stories are how I try and share that meaning with you.  I am actually preaching on Sunday the 27^th and I have joked that if I can do a sermon on finding God in root canals then I will have won sermon-giving (as if sermons were a competition.)

But as I get older, one thing I am learning as Job had to learn in today’s “epilogue” to his story, sometimes meaning is hard to find.  Sometimes, like with Job, you never find meaning.  Job got his chance to address God and demand answers for his suffering and he was rebuffed, with God saying basically, “Hey, where were you when I created the world?”

Despite His lack of answers, God does restore Job’s life, restore it in ways, we are led to believe, were much better than his already good life from before. 

But I don’t know that Job ever figured out why so many bad things happened to him.  What was the point to all that suffering?

I am reminded of a story I love telling people about the time a friend of mine had her little children with her at the soccer field and her daughter sat in a pile of ants.  This was Florida, so the pile of ants was a pile of fire ants.  Interestingly, just the day before, her son had also sat in a pile of fire ants.  (I’m telling you I lived in Florida for twenty-five years and after I was bit by a fire ant pumping gas one day, I never wore flipflops again.)

So my friend is furiously trying to brush the ants off her daughter and her daughter, remembering her brother from the day before, says to her mom, “It’s okay.  It was my turn in the ant pile.”

There was no great meaning behind her suffering.  Everyone suffers.  And at the age of five or so, she already understood that.  It wasn’t her fault.  It wasn’t her mom’s fault.  Probably wasn’t even the ant’s fault.  It was just her turn in the ant pile.

Look, I titled my memoir, “A Genesis 50:20 Girl.”  I am all about God using bad things that happen to us to work good things in our lives.  God doesn’t cause bad things.  But He will use them.  But sometimes we can become so focused on finding meaning in our lives that we fail to take the time to grieve for the people and things we’ve lost.

Yeah, suffering happens to everyone, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t really hurt when bad things happen to us.

And so, it is okay to sit with our pain whether physical or emotional or spiritual and listen to it and acknowledge it but also recognize that in our pain we are not alone, that God is with us. 

Sometimes meaning doesn’t come.

But that doesn’t mean that we are ever alone.

Amen.

P.S. I’m probably not going to preach on my root canal on Sunday the 27^th, but this probably isn’t the last time you’ll hear me talk about Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne.

Lazarus Come Out

On Monday, we gathered at the church for Part 2 of my contemplative photography workshop.  I will always miss my days of walking the property Hope Episcopal Church in Florida and how there was truly something amazing to see every day from bobcats to hawks to herons to otters to osprey.  I was spoiled.

But what I have loved in leading this contemplative photography workshop at my new church in Ohio is that even though it doesn’t have the wild, untamed woods like Hope, there is always something to see, both inside and outside of the church.

Even on a busy road in a busy area of an otherwise bucolic, small town, there is wildlife, primarily deer.  Deer are everywhere in Ohio.  They are Florida’s version of Sandhill Cranes.  If you are driving down a side street and traffic suddenly comes to a stop, chances are, there are deer crossing the road up ahead.

The grounds of St. Barnabas are filled with wildflowers, even now as the summer season is winding down and leaves are beginning to fall. 

Out behind the church is an enormous rose stalk.  The stalk has reached nearly nine feet and at its pinnacle is a perfectly formed, deep-red rose blossom.

So, on Monday at the contemplative photography workshop, I made sure to head out back to check on the rose.  I was carrying my camera.  It was not turned on.  I didn’t anticipate having to take any quick shots like I would if I was taking pictures of bees.  There was a little wind, so I knew the rose might be swaying, but I wasn’t worried about getting a good picture.

As soon as I turned the corner, a tiny hummingbird flew through the air in front of me, alighting on the rose bloom.  I blinked and it was gone again, not to return.

I looked up at the sky and groaned very loudly.  “Gah!” I said.  You see, the hummingbird is on my bird bucket list.  It’s not that I don’t see hummingbirds.  I do.  It’s that I’ve never gotten a picture of one before.  Same with the goldfinch.  Plenty of them around, but I have no pictures of anything other than a yellow blob.

I groaned again.  A hummingbird on top of an enormous, almost record-breaking rose would have been the ultimate picture and I had missed it.

Today’s reading is the story of Jesus telling the disciples that they must go and attend to Lazarus who has died.  We all know the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, but I love in today’s reading, we get to see the disciples acting like the disciples, confused as to what Jesus is talking about and taking him far too literally.

Jesus tells them that Lazarus is asleep and he is going there to wake him up.

The disciples are like well, if he’s asleep, we’re sure he’ll be okay.

To which I imagine Jesus closing his eyes briefly and letting out a long sigh, like any middle school teacher, before reframing his statement explaining that Lazarus is dead.

Today’s reading ends with Thomas saying, “Yeah, let’s go.”

We all know the story of Lazarus.  We know about Mary and Martha.  We know that verse 35 “Jesus wept,” in multiple translations is the shortest verse in the Bible.  We know that when Jesus tells them to remove the stone in front of the tomb that Martha protests because of the smell.  We know they remove the stone anyway and Jesus says these words, “Lazarus come out!”

There is a pause, a dramatic pause.

And then, a man appears, still wrapped in his grave clothes—linen strips we are told, so if you need to picture an Egyptian mummy here, go ahead.  But the mummy is Lazarus.  He is no monster.  He is alive.

There is rejoicing.  The crowd gathers around Lazarus, removing his grave clothes, presumably hugging him and kissing him.  Mary and Martha are most likely in tears.  They are all praising God.  Someone slaps Jesus on the shoulder.  “Yeah,” they say, “we knew you could do it!”  The party lasts for days.

Or at least that’s what I imagine, because in the Bible the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead ends with Jesus commanding that they unbind him and let him go.

But I also got to thinking about my missed opportunity with the hummingbird and rose the other day and I thought what if you were the person who missed the moment Lazarus walks out of the tomb by a minute?  What if you were Thomas—and I use Thomas as an example here because he is the disciple who misses the first appearance of the risen Jesus in the upper room—what if you are Thomas and you’re running a little behind the group.  Maybe you got a stone in your sandal and stopped to dislodge it.  What if you needed to work out a cramp in your hamstring?  What if you just needed a drink of water?  I’ll catch up, you say to yourself.

And then you miss seeing a miracle.

“What’s going on?” you ask as you come up on the crowd gathered outside the tomb.

Peter grabs your shoulders and shakes you.  “I can’t believe you missed it!”

“What did I miss?” you ask.

Peter points to the man in the center of the crowd with linen strips hanging off of him.  “Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead?”

“I thought he was just sleeping,” you say.

“No, man,” Peter explains.  “He was dead, like dead-dead, like you can still smell the death coming from that tomb.  And now he’s alive.”

“He wants something to eat!” someone shouts from the crowd.

Martha races past you, shoving you to one side so she can get some figs and bread from inside the house.

And then you begin to see just what you missed, perhaps the greatest of miracles.

And much like me, you raise your fists to the sky and groan, “Gah!”

The point of contemplative photography to me is to train yourself to pay attention, to not miss the miracles that are happening in your world every day—not on the other side of the world—not on the other side of state, closer to you than the other side of the street, right there in front of you as you move throughout your day.

Be more discerning.

Walk slower.

Hurry less.

Prayer is about intention.

Make finding God your intention every day.

Amen.