Grace threatens all my normalities. –Gerald May
The Husband and I started visiting our current church about six months ago, after a “chance” (no such thing) meeting in New York that was preceded by a prolonged maternity leave from our previous community. We had both gotten comfortable in our Sunday-mornings-off schedule–a little too comfortable–ostensibly accommodating Little Brother’s naps while actually indulging our introversion and exhaustion. But after six months and a seemingly undeniable divine directive, we Google-mapped our way to Anglicanism.
Having grown up a religious mutt (charismatic, Episcopalian, Assembly of God, Church of Christ, Baptist, Insane Clown Posse) before finally settling in a Methodist church, I had no problem shopping around with denominations. It was helpful that I knew nothing about any of the theology and could make judgments based on youth group size and coffee-hour snacks. Once I entered the Reformed tradition, though (keep reading–I promise this gets less boring soon), I knew I’d never leave. Luther, Calvin, Augustine–you can’t go wrong with that kind of pedigree; plus, Redeemer kind of saved my life, what with introducing the novel idea of grace and all. But this new Reformed animal, the Anglican one, with its prayers and liturgy–it was an adjustment. Particularly the weekly practice of passing the peace, which immediately became my least favorite part of the service, due to all the talking to people that it involved. (Hey, at least it ended in a meal.)
After a few weeks, though, I noticed that everyone was actually saying it: peace. Not just, “Hey, I’m Bob.” (Which would have been weird indeed, as there are no Bobs that I know of.) Then I drove an hour southeast and met (in person) an already-friend who, it turned out, was also Anglican, and she said it as LB and I were leaving: “Peace be with you.” And she, like our fellow Sunday attenders, appeared to really mean them, these ancient and oft-repeated words that, despite their ancient-ness and oft-repeated-ness, had not lost their meaning. Then my other friend told me about how much she misses her former Anglican community, about the sacredness of the liturgy and the hole it leaves behind when not uttered each week, and I started thinking about this whole peace-passing thing. About peace, period.
When I decided to move from Alabama to New York, my mom engaged in some serious prayer. I didn’t know the details of it all until much later, once I had returned safely from the big city. One thing she divulged was a very specific request she made of God: that he would protect me with a big African American angel.
Yes, you read that correctly: a big African American angel.
I thought this request was oddly specific, particularly considering my Southern heritage–after all, what would my grandparents have said? (Spoiler alert: something racist.) Then I remembered the time I was running along the East River and a gaggle of girls surrounded me, taunting me, then for no apparent reason (certainly not my resting bitch face, which was in the “off” position due to exertion) glanced around me, turned the other way, and took off. I’m not saying that an invisible-to-me African American dude materialized before their eyes, but I’m also not saying it’s impossible. All I’m saying is that I won’t be surprised if I get to heaven and Jesus is all, “Hey, sister. Let me introduce you to Jerome.” I mean, have you met God? He can kinda do everything.
Which I was reminded of recently, when I picked The Kid up from school.
On Mondays, I collect him thirty early for horse therapy. Every time, it’s the same: I give his name to the front office, enter our info into the computer, and wait in the area between the two sets of glass doors. I gaze down the hallway, and within a couple of minutes I see them.
Them.
One large brown hand enveloping TK’s small white one. One hulking six-foot-five frame alongside one bouncy thirty-nine-inch one. TK loves Mr. S, lights up as soon as he sees him walking down the hall toward him and the other kids in the morning at pick-up. Guess who else has two thumbs, believes in angels, and loves Mr. S?
I’ve had more of a comradeship with anxiety than I have with peace over the years: the nights spent lying awake worrying over everything from terrorism to whether I put the chicken out to thaw; the weeks of eyelid-twitching and heart-racing that sent me to a cardiologist in New York, who fitted me with a monitor that I wore until I quit that wonky job and the twitch and racing went away and I sent the monitor back; every time I send TK through the glass doors and away from me. I grew up with a fear that every time my mom got in the car, she wouldn’t come back–a fear that I’ve since transferred onto TH. How cute, this functional fear, this practical atheism that discounts the theology that formed me, the love that created me–the sovereignty and plan of grace thrown out for the illusion of control. For God’s sake, this past weekend, TH and I went to the beach for a work conference for me (read: for a kid-free, restaurant-hopping getaway for us) and cut to me in a conference room staring at the tilted chandelier, envisioning a Phantom of the Opera scene unfolding in the midst of a mouth sore discussion. Or cut to me later at the spa–a site of some of my deepest anxieties, due largely to the fact that I’m not doing it right unless I’m RELAXED–and I see an hourglass with sand seeping down and all I can think about is how my kids are getting older so fast.
Then cut to TH and I riding bikes on the island and a girl breezes past us on hers, blond hair barely contained by helmet as it floats behind her, and she’s grinning at us, like, “Can you believe this? HOW MUCH FUN ARE WE HAVING?” And TH remarks about how her smile, it reminds him of The Niece’s, that constant joy that comes with being cared for, loved. At peace. And I know that for so long, I called peace by the wrong names: lack of disturbance. Circumstantial. Storm-free. While all this time, I could have been a girl on an island near a hurricane, flying downhill with my hair in the wind and a grin on my mug?
“You would be very ashamed if you knew what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are. You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemies–though that never occurs to you. Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet [God’s] beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is,” wrote Jean Pierre de Caussade.
I can make peace with peace. I can even pass it, instead of just the control issues and the anxieties and the clamoring, to TK and LB. I can know it and I can pass it because it’s not what I thought it was. Nothing is really what I thought it was. Which is, I think, why they call it good news.
It’s evening, and I’ve just come out of TK’s room, where he signed for “more”–after I asked if he wanted more mommy. I lower myself into the bathtub and the water rises all around me but it doesn’t rise above me, and as I think about TK I’m not fretting. I’m not anxious. I get a glimpse beyond the veil, and I see the beautiful, epic lives that my children will have. And for the first time in a while–especially this time of day–I’m excited. I’m giddy, even–grinning, my hair floating behind me. And it feels like peace.