I just watched this brief 4 minute video clip.

I have heard from such a young age that I don’t remember how young how Florence Nightingale was the mother of the nursing profession, and how desperately grateful her patients were for her care.

Nobody ever told me she was a statistician.

A brief reading of Nightingale’s life, apart from worthless blurbs in mandatory ‘educational’ history books, reveals something much more interesting. Nightingale didn’t really turn around the medical situation while serving the wounded of the Crimea war. In fact, it is reported (yes, I’m quoting wikipedia; hear me out anyway, okay?) that throughout her time in Crimea, she staunchly believed the high death rate was due to poor nutrition, not hygienic conditions.

Then she went home and crunched her data. Then she presented her data, and then she acted on her data. Her data did not support her original theory of malnutrition, but she accepted her data (um, poor ventilation and sewage control = bad), and went on to greatly advance hospital sanitation.

The point is–or my point, anyway–Florence Nightingale though she was going to go physically take care of people, she wound up leaving a bigger mark and quite likely saving more lives by being an accurate, honest, accessible, persistent statistician.

I think sometimes we get into these grand plans about What We Are Going To Do, and miss the fact that our biggest impact is being made by the things we didn’t plan and likely aren’t paying as much Attention to.

Sometimes it makes you wonder what history would look like, if your life was written onto a page.

When I plant seeds, I always want to plant more and more and more–just in case. Just in case they don’t sprout. Teeny tiny little seeds. But I try very hard not to, because they do sprout and spring into life and leaf after larger leaf. Nine seeds for nine plants. I have to trust God that it will be, trust I do not have to try to make sure everything is all right.

I have to trust that a smidgen of dry round things will, in a few short months, fill a garden and a kitchen.

When it is time to pot on seedlings, I feel so sad. The seeds that were too fine, like grains of sand, for me to count off–they have all sprouted. Too many, too crowded. I have to choose which to keep, which to get rid of. It seems so wrong–they would all live to bountiful plants, if someone made time and space–there’s nothing wrong with any of them!

I don’t think God laughs at that. But I feel comforted and reminded that He knew and made each seed, knew what would sprout, what the story of each seed would be–here, and outside of the confines of my cell-packs and grow lights. You could say lots, chance, dice, a hundred thousand calculations made in my subconscious where I don’t even know I’m thinking. . .I say I feel that God is prompting me, which ones to tease apart and keep alive.

Seed to seedling to plant to harvest–every little inch along the way, I see God and His guiding mercies. It’s a haven.

For example–you feel stupid, it’s hard work, and sometimes you get a tiny glimpse into how your body is supposed to work, and you catch yourself thinking, “wow, that was easy!” (Until the next stroke. Then you go back to feeling stupid and worn out.)

I guess in some ways it gives me the guts to keep trying to learn things that make me feel stupid, because you know what?

I swam the length of the pool.

Sara Groves

We undervalue an encouraging word. Not in the getting, of course, but in the giving. How many times have you not even said anything, because there was nothing you could do? But an encouraging word is like a cup of cold water.

Someone thanked me today for a postcard. I stared at her stupidly, not remembering. . .and then, from the depths of mundane moments not worth recording, I managed to pull a brief flash of a picture. Generic, pre-printed, commercial post card with a form message on it. A blank space for a name, the secretary’s neat handwriting filling in names of patients no longer being treated. The few minutes found to look over the cards and scribble in brief messages to anyone I recognized. A sentence, maybe two. What did I even say? “Keep up the good work”? I don’t remember.

“Thanks for the postcard. It was very encouraging!”

She got cancer and had her lower leg amputated off.

I sent her a postcard.

What difference does it make?

Sit with me and tell me once again
Of the story that’s been told us
Of the power that will hold us
Of the beauty, of the beauty
Why it matters

Like a single cup of water
How it matters

(Why It Matters, Sara Groves)

. . . and the sound of the trumpet was very loud, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. . . And when the blast of the trumpet sounded long and became louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by voice. . .Now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled. . .

I went to see an orchestra playing, and this passage surged through my mind. Even advanced sound systems cannot compare to every instrument coming from it’s own unique location. The urgency of the music is amplified by half a dozen violin bows, in synchrony, jerking through the air. Tension in the sound is further emphasized by more than a dozen musicians preparing to play on the same note. The eye of the drummer is not fixed on his own drum, but rather fastened unwaveringly at the conductor, the drummer’s whole body poised to act. Parts of whole.

There is no background. There is no ignoring. The music must be heard. Not just heard, listened too.

This, from a community orchestra.

What, then, when the Son of God returns in all His glory?

Joy. Victory. Completion; resolution.

The voice of the angels, ten thousand times ten thousand, singing out.

“Blessing and honor and glory and power
Be to Him who sits on the throne,
And to the Lamb, forever and ever!”

Amen.

The process of learning to walk is about repeatedly falling down–on your behind, with a loud thud–not about gracefully strolling about with people watching you admiringly. The process of seeking someone to teach you is essentially about willingly seeking an audience to watch you fail, repeatedly and without style, until maybe you scramble enough to kind of sort of do it.

It can be uncomfortable having an audience, even if having a teacher can speed the process of learning. The thing is, this is life. Life is learning to talk, learning to walk, learning to get food up and into your mouth, learning to clean yourself and dress yourself. . .learning, learning, learning.

Yet we must chose to learn certain things. And in choosing, we find ourselves counting the cost. Is it worth it? The cost? The time? The effort? The witnesses to everything we don’t already know? To learn, we have to first admit how much we do not know. This is the first part.

Once one has become steeled to the circumstance of having to admit to ignorance and failure, we can seek to learn.

And after getting over that one big awful mountain, one becomes at least somewhat jaded to all the other incredulous inquiries to the honesty of your ignorance.

“You didn’t know how to do that?!” Your simpleness is so quaint! “Good for you for learning!” I’m glad you’ve decided to catch up to the rest of us!

You didn’t know how?

You didn’t know?

Oh, my goodness gracious!

But–now–the journey is already begun. Hopefully we will find the perseverance to finish with grace.

What was one of the most fascinating things is his explanation of why he settled down here. “We lioke it here, we reely do,” he says. “All thot traveling, and here we are. The thing that I like the most, the thing that is soh notable, is how many people are volunteers!” He says this with such delight and wonder, in his clipped words. “Not the same things, and not necessarily a lot of time, but there are soh many people who give of their time. And they’re soh personable! My wife will say, ‘I’m sorry I’m late, but I just could n’t get away from the Supermah-ket!’” And he laughs.

He has traveled the world and back with a high paying job, and yet what he marvels at most is the wonder of small-town friendliness and helpfulness. I think it’s a pretty dang good compliment when that’s someone’s reason for settling down in your area.

I am climbing down the pool steps, explaining to my instructor my relationship to water. I am beginning one-on-one swimming lessons; truth be told, this is something I’ve dreamed of for years and years. Really dreamed–not just wished or planned or wanted to.

I’ve had these recurring dreams where I am in the water, fumbling about. Sometimes there are other people; sometimes I’m alone. Sometimes the water is murky, almost swampy, and sometimes the water is crystal clear. But always I am there, as I would be in real life, struggling for meaningful movement. And then, suddenly, I can swim.

It’s not that I am suddenly going some place or accomplishing fantastical feats. It’s just that in one moment I do not trust the water. And in the next, I do. I move freely, easily. There is no fear. I am exploring, moving, going where I intend to with no obstacles, no resistance. And I am filled with wonder. Not at the water. Not at what I see. Just at the support of the water. The ease of movement. The utter lack of anxiousness.

And then almost invariably, I wake up–and I wake up thinking, “So this is what it feels like when you trust God, when you are free in faith. . .” Or maybe that’s the thought that tells me it’s a dream and causes me to wake up. I don’t know. I also don’t know now if my few attempts at trying to learn–those brief flashes when it works and the water is holding me–are feeding my dreams, or if my dreams are informing me what it must feel like, so I know what I am looking for when I’m in the water. I suspect it is the latter. I am so certain what it should feel like.

And it does, if I ever relax for a few seconds, the way my instructor keeps trying to get me to do. It is almost like slipping into a dream, and if you try too hard, you wake up.

“This is actually a lot easier to learn when you’re a kid,” my instructor explains, shooing several children out of our way and into the deep end. “When you’re older, you spend so much effort trying to analyze every little thing.”

I do. My mind is churning endlessly.

“Also, as a kid, you don’t have all these years and years and years of learning that you can’t. As a kid, you don’t know that you can’t swim. By the time you’re an adult, you’ve had years of this feeling that you just can’t, building up inside of you.”

Yeah. Tell me about it. My mind is split between this conversation, the concentration required to attempt to relax my body and trust the water, my dreams. . .my God.

I slip under the water again. When I fumble, it feels like real life. When things click together, for even an instant, it is a flashback into my dreams.

Somehow, I have to do this. I have to learn how to swim. Because it is a glimpse into a beautiful analogy, an analogy that is not just heard, it is felt, in every fiber of my body. Faith. Hope. Peace. No fear. No effort. Letting go. Trusting. Knowing you will be held up by a force you cannot see, if only you relax.

When the water holds me, I feel like Elisha’s servant.

* * *

I was so scared to start swimming lessons. Not of the water. Scared I couldn’t. Scared I would be taught, and taught and taught and taught, and still the water wouldn’t lift me. I’ve wanted to for so long, but what if it was a dream? What if I couldn’t learn to trust?

I walked in the door, mostly because you have to be on time. My instructor said, “Are you ready?”

I answered, “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

And we went into the water.

Me and someone I don’t even know, yet somehow believe will keep me from harm.

“It’s so frustrating,” I said, “Because this feel like it should be easy.” I feel stupid. I feel illiterate. She shook her head.

“I’ve spent six, eight weeks even just sitting on the stairs with people, helping them with their fear. If you aren’t afraid, you’ve already gotten past the hard part!”

Later, I told her that I knew I hadn’t come properly prepared. But I knew that if I kept waiting until everything was perfect, I would never do it. I had to just come. Stop making excuses and do it. She agreed. “When would work for you next week?” Don’t lose your momentum now.

Want to know what else scares me?

Singing lessons.

I want to, so bad. I can’t explain why–or rather, I think maybe I could, if I used a hundred thousand words. Short of that, all I can say is that “It was midnight, and Paul and Silas were singing.”

But what if I can’t? What if I can’t be taught to sing? What if I try, and they politely tell me I’m a hopeless case? Where do hopeless cases go? Where does one get singing lessons when one is no longer school aged but has no past experience to capitalize upon?

But I have to go and find out. Because. . .

Because.

Because swimming is an analogy of the outside, and singing is an analogy of the inside. Because there is a difference between being on the outside of music looking in, and standing in the middle of music and letting it out. Because it is a part of you and always there. Because, though it is words, it is what words cannot be.

Friday morning I left for work. I knew there was a chance of slippery spots, so I went slow. But unbeknownst to me, I would have to cross a stretch of road that was covered in black ice as far as the eye could see. As I slid toward the guardrail and the ravine filled with rocks and trees, I thought about how it might feel, how much it might hurt. I kissed the rail with the rim of my front wheel and slid toward the ditch on the other side of the road, full of large rocks. Now I thought about my car. And about stopping.

Thanks to the large rocks that took the tire right off the rim, I did stop. The ice continued far beyond my resting place. I promptly turned off the engine, and literally saw the handwritten figures in my notebook, telling me how many dollars left I had to pay on my car, and how long that would be, and what kind of car would I even be able to find on short notice? I reached for my cell-phone, and suddenly. . .this happened for a reason.

I am not going to pretend that it took me less than 5 hours to stop shaking. I won’t deny that that thoughts of my car, the repair bill or the replacement, the remaining debt and the crunching, jolting, grinding noise as I used a bunch of boulders to stop my uncontrolled descent continued to play through my mind.

But underneath it all, I was happy.

God was out of the box.

Not that I was every really keeping Him there, or even intended to put Him there. But when everything seems to be going according to plan, to my expectations. . .somehow God is marginalized. It’s not a happy place, but somehow it is easier to accidentally put Him in a box than it is to deliberately draw Him out.

Sliding around like a hockey puck was NOT in my plans. God is here. I have no idea what He’s doing or why, but His very presence is a comfort.