New River (May 25, 2008)
Romans 8 M9: Message
Text: Romans 8: 26-29
Title: A New River
Big Idea: When we are in Christ the river of the Holy Spirit guides our prayers and our lives.
About 6 months ago I saw the compelling documentary, Deep Water (Show the DVD jacket). The movie retells the story of the world’s first around-the-world sailing race back in 1968 sponsored by the Sunday Times of London, England.
Nine contestants enter the race. Eight are master sailors. There is one “dark horse of the sea” named Donald Crowhurst. Crowhurst is not an experienced sailor. He is a marine electronics specialist who has re-mortgaged his house to enter the competition. He is 36 years old and the father of four children. Crowhurst’s voyage begins ominously, when the champagne bottle cracked against the hull of his boat doesn’t break at the first, second or third try. Crowhurst has trouble getting his sailboat out of the harbour to begin the race. Once he is at sea, his self-made boat begins to first leak and then fall apart. Crowhurst should turn around and head back to England (where the race began), but turning back would mean that he would face financial ruin, as the sponsorship money that had enabled him to enter the race was given on the condition that he would complete the race. Crowhurst also doesn’t want to turn back because that would also signify failure. So Crowhurst, in more than one way, finds himself lost at sea in the Atlantic.
There are times when, like Crowhurst, we feel lost at sea.
Perhaps we don’t know if we’re in the right program at school or in the right job… or the right relationship (or we just wish we were in a relationship)… or we’ve experienced the loss of something: our innocence, our health, a loved one… or perhaps we feel lost because life we’re not where we hoped we would be at this stage in our lives.
What Romans 8 tells us is that those of us who belong to God are never truly lost at sea. In Romans 8 we learn that the river of the Holy Spirit helps guide us in our life’s journey.
We see in Romans 8 how the Holy Spirit assures us that God does not condemn us if we are joined to Christ. We also see in Romans 8 how the Holy Spirit transforms our hearts so that we have the power to live in a new kind of way in the world. The Holy Spirit reveals to us and assures us that we can have a new identity as beloved sons and daughters of God. As Sharon pointed out last Sunday, the Holy Spirit also helps to redeem our suffering.
And as we’ll see today—if lives are joined to Christ even when if feel lost at sea, we are not lost because the river of the Holy Spirit prays for us and through those prayers guides our lives.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Romans 8: 26-29.
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God.
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who [a] have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
In verse 26 we read that the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness by helping us to pray.
Sometimes we do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Holy Spirit himself, Paul says, intercedes for us, and prays for us, through wordless groans. There are times in our life when we don’t know how to pray, or specifically what to pray for, because we are not certain of what God’s intention is for us in a particular matter. We might have a decision to make around school, or work, or a relationship, or where to live, and we don’t know what God’s intention for us is. In those times, Paul tells us, the Holy Spirit helps us by interceding for us, by praying through us, in ways that are deeper than words.
There are times when we experience something so painful we don’t have the strength to pray. When my mentor, a Presbyterian minister, lost his son Sandy (when Sandy was just 21 years old) to a rare heart disease, my mentor was asked, “How could you pray after the death of your son?” He replied, “I couldn’t pray.” When I experienced a very painful break-up as a young adult, for some time after I couldn’t pray…
Sometimes when we experience a deep and painful loss, we cannot pray. And the Apostle Paul here is saying in those times, the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness and prays for us (and through us) with groans that are deeper than words themselves.
There are also times when we feel than we cannot pray because our relationship with God seems so dry. Sometimes Christian teachers will say that we need to do all that we can to eliminate that sense of dryness in our relationship with God, but there are times when God allows a sense of dryness to come into our relationship with him to test us--to see whether we want to engage God simply because it feels good…because we are receiving all kinds of spiritual vibes in prayer, or an experience of a spiritual high worship through music. And sometimes God allows us to experience a season of dryness so that we can know, and so God can know that we are not so much seeking God for some kind of cool spiritual vibe or high but because we love God….
We can all intuit that God would want to wean us off things that are obviously sinful and destructive, such as addiction to illegal drugs, or to promiscuous sex, or addiction to TV or certain foods as a sources of comfort. But we may not know that as we progress in our spiritual life God may also want to wean us from our lusting after certain kinds of spiritual experiences, certain kinds of spiritual highs. So God may in his providence allow us to enter into a season of spiritual dryness. If, as we look back across x number of weeks or months, and we cannot identify any obvious sins that we have committed that would otherwise cut us off from God, and if we have learned the basics of prayer (that’s important to connect with God), but we still feel a dryness in our relationship with God (that wasn’t there before), it may be that God is testing and maturing us through what St. John of the Cross called the “dark night”…
When we are experiencing the “dark night” it is difficult to pray. And in these times, the Holy Spirit, Paul says, intercedes through us. We may not be praying in a very active kind of way, but if we spend time in silence before God, even if we can’t pray, we can know that the river of the Holy Spirit is praying in us and through us, and interceding on our behalf.
We may feel that we are lost at sea, but we are not. As Father Thomas Green points in out in his book on prayer When the Well Runs Dry (and the Dry Well is his way of imaging the dark night) there are times when in our prayer life when we can “swim” and, i.e., have a very active verbal prayer life; and there are times in our prayer life when we cannot swim, when we cannot actively forge a particular direction in our prayers. Thomas Green says in those times we are to float in God, and relax in God, and to surrender to the tide of God, and trust that the tide will carry us where God wills us to go.
A few years ago I was speaking out in Oahu, Hawaii. One afternoon I was on one the beaches of the North Shore and was told by my host and friend Hugo that if you’re not careful a wave can sweep over you and the rip tides can carry you out to sea…
If you try to swim against back to shore against a rip tide, you’ll likely get worn out and die, but if you allow the tide to carry you out and then come to a place where the current isn’t as strong, you swim sideways and you can survive…
In our prayer life there are times when it’s better not to try to actively swim, but to simply float in God and trust that the tide will take us where God wants us to go…
Because the Holy Spirit is interceding for us, even when we cannot pray, we can know, as Paul says in Romans 8: 28, “in all things God is working for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first born of many brothers and sisters.”
And so, we can know, according to Romans 8, that the river of Holy Spirit prays through us and guides us so we are never truly lost at sea, and if we can’t even swim out at sea we can know that if we float, the Holy Spirit will guide us into his purposes.
At this time I want to invite my colleague Catherine Fenn to come forward. Catherine is the pastor of our children’s ministry. Catherine life has been one guided by the river of Holy Spirit and she… is going to share part of her story with us now.
Hi. My name is Catherine Fenn and I’m the children’s pastor here at Tenth Church. I grew up in Saskatchewan and was a gregarious kid. Despite being outgoing I always felt alone. I remember as a very young child wondering why I was on the planet.
Despite coming from a farily functional home, as a young teenager I discovered that life was better, easier and more tolerable when I was high. I fell easily into a life of addictions to various things, got into a lot of trouble trying to finance those addictions and put myself in places of danger in the process.
During this time I did look for deeper meaning, for power and for hope in various places. I tried church, I tried psychiatry, I tried transendental experiences.
When I was eighteen and came to terms with the fact that I was pregnant, it felt like my heart was falling out. I didn’t have the strength to face another abortion, and made the decision to take this pregnancy to term, and give my baby up for adoption.
I had dropped out of school and was working at this time as a hair sylist in a salon that was owned by my boyfriend’s father. I knew that my baby would have the best chance in life if I could get healthy, and though I wasn’t able to stop drinking or smoking pot, I made a strong effort to curtail the use of other drugs.
A few months into my pregnancy, I picked up a book that looked interesting to me. I thought it was about the devil. The book is called Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth, and is written by a popular Christian author of that time, Hal Lindsay. Hal begins by talking about the occult, and how some people find it attractive. He had me totally with him here. He then goes on to describe how difficult and impossible life can get for those people, and still I was right there tracking everything he says. Here I was, eighteen and pregnant, in despair, full of shame and feeling about 85 years old, and unable to change. I was sitting and reading this book at work. The salon was empty that day, and I was there just answering the phone. I remember clearly putting the book down at one point and the thought going through my mind that I wished the world would just stop so that I could get off. When I picked up the book again, I turned the page. And right at the top of the next page Hal says: Right now you probably wish the world would just stop so that you could get off. I felt like he was reading my mind! In the past! And he goes on to explain that the God of the universe has this amazing plan for people JUST LIKE ME. That he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross and to rescue us from all the bad things we have done, to give us a brnad new life, a clean slate and a fresh start. You can’t imagine what good news this was for me! I didn’t walk to God, I ran. And as I sat there in that salon, and asked God to forgive my sins and to take over my life I literally FELT the joy of Jesus washing me in his love and peace. And as I continued to read Hal suggested that I get a Bible and read that too. So I picked up a copy of the Living Bible, New Testament, and read it cover to cover over the next week.
My pregnancy continued and my life style was still very shaky, but over the next few months I fell in love with my baby. If you’ve ever been pregnant you may be able to relate to this. I talked to him all the time, told him how much I loved him, was so connected to him. I dreaded the day that I would go into labour because I knew it would be the end.
And when that day came, I was determined to face it without the use of pain killers. I know this is a bit of a contradiction to how I was living the rest of my life, but I WANTED to experience it all with my mind fully engaged, to be able to remember those last moments with my child.
But in those minutes shortly before he was born, the pain of being in labour got to the point where I thought I couldn’t bear it anymore. And suddenly I had a very strong impression of God’s hand reaching down to me, and mine reaching up to him, and when our hands clasped in that moment my pain was not taken away, but it was reduced, and I had the strength to go forward with the delivery knowing for sure that I was not alone.
A few days later, in a room off to the side in that hospital, I sat with the legal documents in front of me, and a social worker across from me, and thought about what I was doing. I thought for so long that she got angry with me – it was just another day for her, and she was probably afraid that I would change my mind. In the end I signed those forms and relinguished my child to the government of Saskatchewan, to be placed for adoption. As it turned out, the social worker had written the wrong date on the forms, and I had to go back to the hospital later that day and do it all over again. I thought about skipping this detail since it is not really a necessary part of my story, but I actually still feel ticked off at her for making this clerical error so I decided to include it! When I finally walked away from the hospital that day, I truly felt alone. Pastor Ken’s metaphor of being lost at sea is exactly perfect for what I was feeling. I had no control and felt no consolation. I fell apart, eventually seeking comfort in all the familiar ways I’d learned to cope with pain.
Over the next few years God worked on me, patiently. I eventually found my way to a community of people who shared my experience of God’s amazing love in their lives. And God helped me to leave behind the things that had been so destructive to me. I prayed for my son every day, sometimes many many times a day. I loved him, and missed him, and though I felt somehow that God was looking after him, I still worried that he might not be okay.
Fast forward many years. By this time I was married and my husband and I together had 3 children. But I had never forgotten my first son, and I still needed to know what had happened to him, so I registered with Saskatchewan Social Services to do a post-adoption search. And then I waited. 2 years later a social worker contacted me and asked me to confirm whether or not I still wanted to do the search. She explained that I shouldn’t think that there would be a fairy-tale ending, and that in her experience these searches can end badly. She explained that adopted children have a higher than normal rate of social problems. And she asked “What if your son is on the street, do you STILL want to know?” And I said “Yes! Yes, I need to know what happened to him.”
Well, a couple of weeks later I was at work here, downstairs in my office, when the phone rang. It was that social worker, and she said, “I have good news. I’ve found your son.” I don’t know if you can imagine the emotions that raced through me when she said that! She told me that she had just had a long phone conversation with him, and that he sounded like a really nice guy, and that he was very open to meeting me. And then she said, “I know this is kind of funny, but he’s a little like you.” When I asked what she meant she said, “Well, he works for a religious organization and he works with children.” And she mentioned that he was currently living in Calgary.
The process of getting together with Danny, that’s my son’s name, was gradual and controlled. First of all we wrote letters to each other, and then we emailed. He explained that he was a Christian, and that he worked for a missions organization, working mostly with trouble youth in various parts of the world. He told me about his wife and about the wonderful family he’d grown up in.
And then we had our first phone conversation. It was amazing to hear his voice. He sounded like my Dad, and my brother, and my other sons. We laughed a lot in that conversation, and made plans to get together.
And then finally the day came when we would meet. After church one Sunday I flew to Calgary rented a car at the airport, and drove over to his place. Suddenly I was filled with fear. It was like the most bizzare blind date you can imagine. When I got to his place I knew that he was sitting there waiting for me, but I just could NOT stop the car. I drove right on by, and tried to pull myself together. You’ll be happy to know that I eventually got up the courage to pull over, walk up to the door, and ring the bell.
That first meeting was amazing. We talked for hours and hours, intensely comparing notes, marvelling at all the many freakish similarities we discovered. I can’t list them all but they were things like how Danny was working out of a church in Calgary where my husband’s uncle was the senior pastor. This uncle had known Danny’s adoptive parents for 30 years, and had known and loved my son from the moment they brought him home. And how my good friend, Dean Pinter, had grown up in a house just down the street from Danny, going to the same church, even babysitting Danny and his sister when they were little.
Danny has a fantastic sense of humour, and is very easy to be with. He’s a huge hockey fan, and one of the first things he said to me was: Please tell me my Dad is Wayne Gretsky.” I had to tell him that sorry, I didn’t even know Wayne. And he made a point of telling me very seriously about the focus of his life. He said: “Catherine I need you to know that the most important thing in my life is God. Serving him is what my life is all about.” I don’t know if you can imagine how it felt to hear him say that.
It’s been 3 ½ years since that meeting and we continue to get to know each other.
Now I have to say that I did have one hesiation in telling my story here today. It’s because on the surface it all looks so good. You may be sitting there thinking that my life was messed up, and then I turned it over to God, and now hey presto everything is great.
What I want you to know is that it isn’t like that.
First of all there were 25 years of separation that were painful to me. And then, even in our re-connection, there is a new kind of struggle for me, one I hadn’t anticipated. I had tried to prepare myself for bad news about Danny. I’d thought about how I might react if I discovered that he was living on the street or in a crackhouse somewhere. I’d even thought about how I might try to deal with the guilt I’d feel if he had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. What I wasn’t prepared for was the sense of loss I’d have when I met him and discovered what a wonderful person he is. How I’d realize then just how much I’d truly given up, and how I would never get that time back. And though we have a good and growing relationship, it is different from the relationship I have with the kids I’ve raised.
And you’ve got to know that I took a ton of baggage into my marriage with me.
And the thing about the addictions is still a part of my life. I know that I need to live in a pretty controlled way to avoid temptation, and that I need to be in a supportive community.
But one thing I CAN say, is that in all these things, in the joy and in the pain, I can see God’s hand. It’s like that moment when I was in labour, and sensed God reaching down to me. The pain didn’t disappear, but I knew that I wasn’t carrying it alone anymore.
What Catherine’s story and Paul’s words in Romans 8 tell us is that if we belong to God we are never really lost at sea, that we are in the river of God and that God is working all things, all things for good to those who love God and those who are called according to his purpose…
Pray…. You may want to thank God for guiding you…. You may want to pray God would enable you to enter the river of himself… by helping you to give your life to him and experience the washing of the river which makes all things new… you may simply want to sit in silence…
Prayer of Thomas Merton from Thoughts in Solitude
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
(The sermon can be heard on line at: http://www.tenth.ca/)
Text: Romans 8: 26-29
Title: A New River
Big Idea: When we are in Christ the river of the Holy Spirit guides our prayers and our lives.
About 6 months ago I saw the compelling documentary, Deep Water (Show the DVD jacket). The movie retells the story of the world’s first around-the-world sailing race back in 1968 sponsored by the Sunday Times of London, England.
Nine contestants enter the race. Eight are master sailors. There is one “dark horse of the sea” named Donald Crowhurst. Crowhurst is not an experienced sailor. He is a marine electronics specialist who has re-mortgaged his house to enter the competition. He is 36 years old and the father of four children. Crowhurst’s voyage begins ominously, when the champagne bottle cracked against the hull of his boat doesn’t break at the first, second or third try. Crowhurst has trouble getting his sailboat out of the harbour to begin the race. Once he is at sea, his self-made boat begins to first leak and then fall apart. Crowhurst should turn around and head back to England (where the race began), but turning back would mean that he would face financial ruin, as the sponsorship money that had enabled him to enter the race was given on the condition that he would complete the race. Crowhurst also doesn’t want to turn back because that would also signify failure. So Crowhurst, in more than one way, finds himself lost at sea in the Atlantic.
There are times when, like Crowhurst, we feel lost at sea.
Perhaps we don’t know if we’re in the right program at school or in the right job… or the right relationship (or we just wish we were in a relationship)… or we’ve experienced the loss of something: our innocence, our health, a loved one… or perhaps we feel lost because life we’re not where we hoped we would be at this stage in our lives.
What Romans 8 tells us is that those of us who belong to God are never truly lost at sea. In Romans 8 we learn that the river of the Holy Spirit helps guide us in our life’s journey.
We see in Romans 8 how the Holy Spirit assures us that God does not condemn us if we are joined to Christ. We also see in Romans 8 how the Holy Spirit transforms our hearts so that we have the power to live in a new kind of way in the world. The Holy Spirit reveals to us and assures us that we can have a new identity as beloved sons and daughters of God. As Sharon pointed out last Sunday, the Holy Spirit also helps to redeem our suffering.
And as we’ll see today—if lives are joined to Christ even when if feel lost at sea, we are not lost because the river of the Holy Spirit prays for us and through those prayers guides our lives.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Romans 8: 26-29.
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God.
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who [a] have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
In verse 26 we read that the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness by helping us to pray.
Sometimes we do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Holy Spirit himself, Paul says, intercedes for us, and prays for us, through wordless groans. There are times in our life when we don’t know how to pray, or specifically what to pray for, because we are not certain of what God’s intention is for us in a particular matter. We might have a decision to make around school, or work, or a relationship, or where to live, and we don’t know what God’s intention for us is. In those times, Paul tells us, the Holy Spirit helps us by interceding for us, by praying through us, in ways that are deeper than words.
There are times when we experience something so painful we don’t have the strength to pray. When my mentor, a Presbyterian minister, lost his son Sandy (when Sandy was just 21 years old) to a rare heart disease, my mentor was asked, “How could you pray after the death of your son?” He replied, “I couldn’t pray.” When I experienced a very painful break-up as a young adult, for some time after I couldn’t pray…
Sometimes when we experience a deep and painful loss, we cannot pray. And the Apostle Paul here is saying in those times, the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness and prays for us (and through us) with groans that are deeper than words themselves.
There are also times when we feel than we cannot pray because our relationship with God seems so dry. Sometimes Christian teachers will say that we need to do all that we can to eliminate that sense of dryness in our relationship with God, but there are times when God allows a sense of dryness to come into our relationship with him to test us--to see whether we want to engage God simply because it feels good…because we are receiving all kinds of spiritual vibes in prayer, or an experience of a spiritual high worship through music. And sometimes God allows us to experience a season of dryness so that we can know, and so God can know that we are not so much seeking God for some kind of cool spiritual vibe or high but because we love God….
We can all intuit that God would want to wean us off things that are obviously sinful and destructive, such as addiction to illegal drugs, or to promiscuous sex, or addiction to TV or certain foods as a sources of comfort. But we may not know that as we progress in our spiritual life God may also want to wean us from our lusting after certain kinds of spiritual experiences, certain kinds of spiritual highs. So God may in his providence allow us to enter into a season of spiritual dryness. If, as we look back across x number of weeks or months, and we cannot identify any obvious sins that we have committed that would otherwise cut us off from God, and if we have learned the basics of prayer (that’s important to connect with God), but we still feel a dryness in our relationship with God (that wasn’t there before), it may be that God is testing and maturing us through what St. John of the Cross called the “dark night”…
When we are experiencing the “dark night” it is difficult to pray. And in these times, the Holy Spirit, Paul says, intercedes through us. We may not be praying in a very active kind of way, but if we spend time in silence before God, even if we can’t pray, we can know that the river of the Holy Spirit is praying in us and through us, and interceding on our behalf.
We may feel that we are lost at sea, but we are not. As Father Thomas Green points in out in his book on prayer When the Well Runs Dry (and the Dry Well is his way of imaging the dark night) there are times when in our prayer life when we can “swim” and, i.e., have a very active verbal prayer life; and there are times in our prayer life when we cannot swim, when we cannot actively forge a particular direction in our prayers. Thomas Green says in those times we are to float in God, and relax in God, and to surrender to the tide of God, and trust that the tide will carry us where God wills us to go.
A few years ago I was speaking out in Oahu, Hawaii. One afternoon I was on one the beaches of the North Shore and was told by my host and friend Hugo that if you’re not careful a wave can sweep over you and the rip tides can carry you out to sea…
If you try to swim against back to shore against a rip tide, you’ll likely get worn out and die, but if you allow the tide to carry you out and then come to a place where the current isn’t as strong, you swim sideways and you can survive…
In our prayer life there are times when it’s better not to try to actively swim, but to simply float in God and trust that the tide will take us where God wants us to go…
Because the Holy Spirit is interceding for us, even when we cannot pray, we can know, as Paul says in Romans 8: 28, “in all things God is working for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first born of many brothers and sisters.”
And so, we can know, according to Romans 8, that the river of Holy Spirit prays through us and guides us so we are never truly lost at sea, and if we can’t even swim out at sea we can know that if we float, the Holy Spirit will guide us into his purposes.
At this time I want to invite my colleague Catherine Fenn to come forward. Catherine is the pastor of our children’s ministry. Catherine life has been one guided by the river of Holy Spirit and she… is going to share part of her story with us now.
Hi. My name is Catherine Fenn and I’m the children’s pastor here at Tenth Church. I grew up in Saskatchewan and was a gregarious kid. Despite being outgoing I always felt alone. I remember as a very young child wondering why I was on the planet.
Despite coming from a farily functional home, as a young teenager I discovered that life was better, easier and more tolerable when I was high. I fell easily into a life of addictions to various things, got into a lot of trouble trying to finance those addictions and put myself in places of danger in the process.
During this time I did look for deeper meaning, for power and for hope in various places. I tried church, I tried psychiatry, I tried transendental experiences.
When I was eighteen and came to terms with the fact that I was pregnant, it felt like my heart was falling out. I didn’t have the strength to face another abortion, and made the decision to take this pregnancy to term, and give my baby up for adoption.
I had dropped out of school and was working at this time as a hair sylist in a salon that was owned by my boyfriend’s father. I knew that my baby would have the best chance in life if I could get healthy, and though I wasn’t able to stop drinking or smoking pot, I made a strong effort to curtail the use of other drugs.
A few months into my pregnancy, I picked up a book that looked interesting to me. I thought it was about the devil. The book is called Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth, and is written by a popular Christian author of that time, Hal Lindsay. Hal begins by talking about the occult, and how some people find it attractive. He had me totally with him here. He then goes on to describe how difficult and impossible life can get for those people, and still I was right there tracking everything he says. Here I was, eighteen and pregnant, in despair, full of shame and feeling about 85 years old, and unable to change. I was sitting and reading this book at work. The salon was empty that day, and I was there just answering the phone. I remember clearly putting the book down at one point and the thought going through my mind that I wished the world would just stop so that I could get off. When I picked up the book again, I turned the page. And right at the top of the next page Hal says: Right now you probably wish the world would just stop so that you could get off. I felt like he was reading my mind! In the past! And he goes on to explain that the God of the universe has this amazing plan for people JUST LIKE ME. That he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross and to rescue us from all the bad things we have done, to give us a brnad new life, a clean slate and a fresh start. You can’t imagine what good news this was for me! I didn’t walk to God, I ran. And as I sat there in that salon, and asked God to forgive my sins and to take over my life I literally FELT the joy of Jesus washing me in his love and peace. And as I continued to read Hal suggested that I get a Bible and read that too. So I picked up a copy of the Living Bible, New Testament, and read it cover to cover over the next week.
My pregnancy continued and my life style was still very shaky, but over the next few months I fell in love with my baby. If you’ve ever been pregnant you may be able to relate to this. I talked to him all the time, told him how much I loved him, was so connected to him. I dreaded the day that I would go into labour because I knew it would be the end.
And when that day came, I was determined to face it without the use of pain killers. I know this is a bit of a contradiction to how I was living the rest of my life, but I WANTED to experience it all with my mind fully engaged, to be able to remember those last moments with my child.
But in those minutes shortly before he was born, the pain of being in labour got to the point where I thought I couldn’t bear it anymore. And suddenly I had a very strong impression of God’s hand reaching down to me, and mine reaching up to him, and when our hands clasped in that moment my pain was not taken away, but it was reduced, and I had the strength to go forward with the delivery knowing for sure that I was not alone.
A few days later, in a room off to the side in that hospital, I sat with the legal documents in front of me, and a social worker across from me, and thought about what I was doing. I thought for so long that she got angry with me – it was just another day for her, and she was probably afraid that I would change my mind. In the end I signed those forms and relinguished my child to the government of Saskatchewan, to be placed for adoption. As it turned out, the social worker had written the wrong date on the forms, and I had to go back to the hospital later that day and do it all over again. I thought about skipping this detail since it is not really a necessary part of my story, but I actually still feel ticked off at her for making this clerical error so I decided to include it! When I finally walked away from the hospital that day, I truly felt alone. Pastor Ken’s metaphor of being lost at sea is exactly perfect for what I was feeling. I had no control and felt no consolation. I fell apart, eventually seeking comfort in all the familiar ways I’d learned to cope with pain.
Over the next few years God worked on me, patiently. I eventually found my way to a community of people who shared my experience of God’s amazing love in their lives. And God helped me to leave behind the things that had been so destructive to me. I prayed for my son every day, sometimes many many times a day. I loved him, and missed him, and though I felt somehow that God was looking after him, I still worried that he might not be okay.
Fast forward many years. By this time I was married and my husband and I together had 3 children. But I had never forgotten my first son, and I still needed to know what had happened to him, so I registered with Saskatchewan Social Services to do a post-adoption search. And then I waited. 2 years later a social worker contacted me and asked me to confirm whether or not I still wanted to do the search. She explained that I shouldn’t think that there would be a fairy-tale ending, and that in her experience these searches can end badly. She explained that adopted children have a higher than normal rate of social problems. And she asked “What if your son is on the street, do you STILL want to know?” And I said “Yes! Yes, I need to know what happened to him.”
Well, a couple of weeks later I was at work here, downstairs in my office, when the phone rang. It was that social worker, and she said, “I have good news. I’ve found your son.” I don’t know if you can imagine the emotions that raced through me when she said that! She told me that she had just had a long phone conversation with him, and that he sounded like a really nice guy, and that he was very open to meeting me. And then she said, “I know this is kind of funny, but he’s a little like you.” When I asked what she meant she said, “Well, he works for a religious organization and he works with children.” And she mentioned that he was currently living in Calgary.
The process of getting together with Danny, that’s my son’s name, was gradual and controlled. First of all we wrote letters to each other, and then we emailed. He explained that he was a Christian, and that he worked for a missions organization, working mostly with trouble youth in various parts of the world. He told me about his wife and about the wonderful family he’d grown up in.
And then we had our first phone conversation. It was amazing to hear his voice. He sounded like my Dad, and my brother, and my other sons. We laughed a lot in that conversation, and made plans to get together.
And then finally the day came when we would meet. After church one Sunday I flew to Calgary rented a car at the airport, and drove over to his place. Suddenly I was filled with fear. It was like the most bizzare blind date you can imagine. When I got to his place I knew that he was sitting there waiting for me, but I just could NOT stop the car. I drove right on by, and tried to pull myself together. You’ll be happy to know that I eventually got up the courage to pull over, walk up to the door, and ring the bell.
That first meeting was amazing. We talked for hours and hours, intensely comparing notes, marvelling at all the many freakish similarities we discovered. I can’t list them all but they were things like how Danny was working out of a church in Calgary where my husband’s uncle was the senior pastor. This uncle had known Danny’s adoptive parents for 30 years, and had known and loved my son from the moment they brought him home. And how my good friend, Dean Pinter, had grown up in a house just down the street from Danny, going to the same church, even babysitting Danny and his sister when they were little.
Danny has a fantastic sense of humour, and is very easy to be with. He’s a huge hockey fan, and one of the first things he said to me was: Please tell me my Dad is Wayne Gretsky.” I had to tell him that sorry, I didn’t even know Wayne. And he made a point of telling me very seriously about the focus of his life. He said: “Catherine I need you to know that the most important thing in my life is God. Serving him is what my life is all about.” I don’t know if you can imagine how it felt to hear him say that.
It’s been 3 ½ years since that meeting and we continue to get to know each other.
Now I have to say that I did have one hesiation in telling my story here today. It’s because on the surface it all looks so good. You may be sitting there thinking that my life was messed up, and then I turned it over to God, and now hey presto everything is great.
What I want you to know is that it isn’t like that.
First of all there were 25 years of separation that were painful to me. And then, even in our re-connection, there is a new kind of struggle for me, one I hadn’t anticipated. I had tried to prepare myself for bad news about Danny. I’d thought about how I might react if I discovered that he was living on the street or in a crackhouse somewhere. I’d even thought about how I might try to deal with the guilt I’d feel if he had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. What I wasn’t prepared for was the sense of loss I’d have when I met him and discovered what a wonderful person he is. How I’d realize then just how much I’d truly given up, and how I would never get that time back. And though we have a good and growing relationship, it is different from the relationship I have with the kids I’ve raised.
And you’ve got to know that I took a ton of baggage into my marriage with me.
And the thing about the addictions is still a part of my life. I know that I need to live in a pretty controlled way to avoid temptation, and that I need to be in a supportive community.
But one thing I CAN say, is that in all these things, in the joy and in the pain, I can see God’s hand. It’s like that moment when I was in labour, and sensed God reaching down to me. The pain didn’t disappear, but I knew that I wasn’t carrying it alone anymore.
What Catherine’s story and Paul’s words in Romans 8 tell us is that if we belong to God we are never really lost at sea, that we are in the river of God and that God is working all things, all things for good to those who love God and those who are called according to his purpose…
Pray…. You may want to thank God for guiding you…. You may want to pray God would enable you to enter the river of himself… by helping you to give your life to him and experience the washing of the river which makes all things new… you may simply want to sit in silence…
Prayer of Thomas Merton from Thoughts in Solitude
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
(The sermon can be heard on line at: http://www.tenth.ca/)
posted by Shigematsu at 11:32 AM
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