It's the Incompleteness of the Ending!

Perhaps, the World's Only 20 Pound Paperweight

I have been a big ball of anxiety lately.  If pressed, I can pretty clearly tell you why; but I will spare you most of the details.  Instead I just want to talk about how I would like to go about fixing it.  This past Saturday morning I woke up with extreme pain in my neck, unable to turn my head or move my right arm.  It was the most annoying thing because I had a long list of to-dos.  Well, the Spike-Monster and I did a lot of laying around on Saturday into part of Sunday.  While he is a world-champion bum, I was going out of my mind.  I got bored with the television, I don't have a book yet for my Kindle, and I could not get my brain to stop working.  At some point I realized that I had a small stack of articles/miscellaneous readings that I had been saving for just such an occasion, apparently.  In fact, the bottom of the stack is an article dated October, 2007.  That means this particular article has moved with me to three different apartments in Denver, and I am glad to say it was worth holding on to.  More on that in a moment.

On the top of the stack was something I had saved because I really liked it, an Easter Sunday Sermon from The Rev. Gretchen Wilson Bretz.  Her husband, Paul is my colleague and one of the pastors marrying Danny and me.  It was entitled, "Witness to the Savior." 

The sermon starts by talking about the brevity of the resurrection story, as it is told by Mark's gospel.  For her, "it is not only the brevity (8 verses on the resurrection) that left her wanting more, it was the incompleteness of the ending!

'So they went out and fled from the tomb (that is Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome) for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.'

What kind of ending was that; is it a cliff-hanger or a truncated ending?  What is it?  It is no wonder that over time a longer ending was added.  ...Mark didn't complete the resurrection story!  He left the ending open to us.  I wonder if that was intentional?  I wonder if he wanted us to write the ending?  The resurrection story is one that keeps going.  It keeps being written, in your life and in mine.  It is our story.  It is our ending and our beginning.  How will you, by God's grace, write the next chapter in your life?  What doors will you open?  What doors will you close?  How will the doors you open and the paths you walk lead to light, life, and grace?"

I suddenly found myself feeling a bit more  justified in my anxiety.  Right now the endings to my various sources of anxiety are very incomplete.  The biggest one being the wedding that Danny and I are trying to plan.  I hope that it is going to turn out well, but I am struggling to see the full picture of the wedding itself.  What I do not struggle with is knowing that at the end of that day in September, Danny and I will be husband and wife; something that elicits strong feelings of gratitude.  This leads me to that article from October, 2007, "How the New Science of Thank You Can Change Your Life".  It appears to have come from a large print Reader's Digest (thanks, Grandmom).   It is an excerpt of a book, Thank You Power.  The article starts out with a person who is rethinking everything in his life, and by the end of a seemingly mundane errand he found himself feeling thankful simply by counting things along the way that made him happy.    It goes on to talk about scientific studies that show how an attitude of gratitude can have all kinds of positive physical and physiological effects on a person.  "Gratitude is a discipline.  It may not come easily, but it can be developed." 

So as I laid there on the couch, held down by my stocky 19-20 pound Spikers, or as Danny calls him one of the greatest, living paper weights one can find, I started counting the things that I am thankful for/make me happy.  Here is a sample, in no particular order:

• My family and friends
• Danny loves me for who I am at this moment
• Spike
• A roof over my head
• My job/Danny's job
• The Orioles are on top of the AL East, and the White Sox are under .500 yet there's hope!
• I get to go home next week
• My faith journey

Here is my parting thought from a section at the end of the article called, "Love is a Many Icky Thing, Having Trouble with amour?  These kids have it all figured out." 

Q: How do you decide who to marry?

A: No one decides before they grow up.  God decides it way before, and you get to find out later who you're stuck with.  - Kristen, 10

I love it!  What a great reminder that while I don't know how all this all ends, God sure does.  S/he got me this far, and so I need to trust that things will work out.  Rev. Bretz ended her sermon capturing this sentiment better than me, "Easter reminds me that new life, new possibilities, fresh opportunities are always possible."