I was having a low blood sugar attack. So I yelled "TURN RIGHT!" and mom did, and we went to In-N-Out and I placed my order to a smiley teenager who asked me how my day was and I said good. She stood there and smiled, still, so I sat down on the bench to wait for the "guest number 39!" to be called out so I could grab my grub and leave. Chained to the counter top was a donation jar for abused kids. I stared at the pictures covering it, all the pathos trying to enter my heart, and smack in the middle of it read "HEARTS HEAL" in red uppercase. God, I thought. Does that ever happen to you? Where you hear something and you don't know how the two things are related but the word God pops into your head and you have to try see how the two things go together? "Hearts Heal" and "God" swam around in my brain for a while, (sometimes banging into my skull), and then I saw the beauty, or maybe the reflection of the beauty, of God's grace and God's love. We have antidotes. And we have medicine for headaches. And gosh darn it, we even have heart replacements. But no one but God, the trinity God, can fix a hurt heart and mend it in such a way that it's new, but all the while so very yours. And so I then I realized that my pocket change in no way is going to heal a heart. It can protect a heart. It can rescue a heart. It can drag a heart away from a bad situation. But it's not going to heal it. It makes me scared to death that I've hurt someone. I'm scared that maybe I ripped and scarred someone's heart who I love, or even I hate, but it doesn't matter because ALL hearts can still break because they're fragile and I think a hurt heart is worse than probably any other part of your body. God fixes. The smiley girl yelled "Guest 39!" twice, and I finally heard her.
I was at the library again and a mid-aged woman wearing a colorful skirt and a thick hispanic accent was at the reference desk with her son who had some sort of mental problem. I wasn't paying attention and so all I knew was that I needed to know where an auto-biography of Walt Whitman was located, and she was holding up the bus. But then I listened.
"Oh it's okay, you gave me a whole set of the pink ones last week!"
"Oh no I insist! Here! Here's a whole set of blue! Oh yes, these are very nice, you'll like these!" "Okay, if you insist!"
"I do! Take them! I made them for you!"
She had crocheted doilies for all the librarians. And from the conversation, she brings them sets of them each week. Even when they don't need anymore. Even when they feel as if they have enough. "God" popped into my head again.
Tomorrow's Easter and I love it. I love family and dresses and cascarones that you can break on people's heads and I love the fresh grass and sun and pink lemonade with chocolate, too. But it's good to sit down for a moment, maybe an hour, a minute, close your eyes for a second, and think of God. And think of Easter. And realize that you'll never be able to comprehend him, nor his love, nor his grace. And Jesus rising again is more than a dead man coming back to life. But if you sit there you might begin realizing that letting go and letting yourself fall deep into him, God, and realizing you look goofy and strange and not at all right in the head, somehow fixes your heart. Mends it slowly, and you receive more than you need in gifts from someone who has no reason to love you. He fixes and loves, and he is here. God is with us.
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