Miracle at I-95 and Chippenham Pkwy. 2: Fear and Beyond

Left: Our Lady of the Burning Bush

I promise: this is not the Dr. Phil show, not a psycho strip tease, so popular in our culture, but a spiritual witness to the astounding grace of God.

In my early 40s, a trailing spouse, pastor of a small rurban church, I became a resident in clinical pastoral counseling at the Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care.  With a lackluster record as a pastor, I faced reevaluating my life and career and retooling for the future.

Counselors do their own talk therapy, and I had begun that as well.

My teenage son had adjusted to our family’s relocation; and my wife, through prodigious effort, had enjoyed very significant early success, which has continued for the past 20 years.

To understand my fear of looking within, you have to understand my family of origin.

My father, retired military, was a lay Baptist preacher; my mother, a fourth grade teacher and church organist.  I have two older sisters.  But our family was severely dysfunctional. I had a poor self-image.

I was terrified at what psychotherapy might reveal.

I live with  chronic depression and mild cerebral palsy (an oxymoron).  My dad wanted a football player and I always felt like damaged goods.

In fact, I felt like God hated me. No matter how hard I tried, I could not please God — and I tried and tried.

The only explanation I could think of was that there must be something really wrong with me.

With fear and trembling, I risked everything: my faith, my career, my future.  I opened the deep recesses of my soul to the light of day.

At that moment, as I slowed down to go through the toll booth, I wondered: what if  God not only does not hate me, but in fact God made me just as I am. What if I am God’s work of art (Eph. 2.10 NJB)?

And inaudibly I heard these words:

Everyone who lives by the truth comes to the light that it may be clearly seen that God is in all they do. John 3.21

At that moment, God deleted the what if. It hit me: God had made me just as I am!

I hadn’t read or thought consciously of John 3.21 in months. But there it was, ringing in my heart.

Everyone who lives by the truth comes to the light that it may be clearly seen that God is in all they do. John 3.21

Much later I found words for my transformational experience in Ps 139.13-16:

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
     you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
     Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
     intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
     all the days that were formed for me,
     when none of them as yet existed. 

 I began to float in a universe, all of light and joy, an ecstacy that lasted about two months, before slowly fading.

 A year later, I consulted Quaker mystic John Yungblut, whom I had met at a retreat with the Richmond Friends Meeting. I didn’t feel free to tell him more of my story, just as I have limited my self disclosure here.

He wrote the classic The Gentle Art of Spiritual Guidance, among others.

Friend Yungblut suggested this illumination was intended to prepare me for my new ministry of counseling.

I don’t know, since my career in counseling and spiritual friendship did not flourish.

When I die, I expect to see that beautiful light near-death survivors talk about. But for me, it won’t be anything new.

I’ve already experienced it — him, I should say: Jesus, the Light of this world and of any others there may be, Jesus, the Light of home.