As mentioned before, God endowed me with the gift to gab. Not His shortcoming but mine, I have not so readily accepted His gift of listening. This week proved this lack on my part. Most every thought I write comes from my conversations with God. My solo walks around my backdoor lake provide many hours of God and me talking time.
Three days ago, while rounding the lake path and wondering what my next “God think” might be, the answer crossed my path. In most situations, I would have smiled, cocked my head up to heaven and uttered, “Got it God!!!” Not this time.
Those who know me, generally speaking, see me as a pig headed, strong-willed, up to any challenge lady. Those who intricately know me would, also, tell you while my head, heart and soul are strong, my gut is crumbling putty when it comes to my Achilles heel – snakes. My Mother is to credit, or rather blame, for this. I thank my Mom for all the dreams she helped instill in me. However, I lack appreciation for the fear her sharing her childhood snake nightmare cemented in me.
Let’s travel back to my walk three days ago. As I rounded a curve in the lake path, a good ten feet ahead of me, my eyes caught hold of a small snake slithering out of the tall grasses, across the path, down the slope of the shoreline and into the water. I saw the entire serpent journey only because I, literally, froze in place. Miracle of all, my vocal cords were iced solid in silence, too. Of course, soon as the snake disappeared under the surface, my vanity began peering around making sure no fellow walker observed my wimpy panic. Nope, I was the sole person witnessing the scene. My next thought was another shocking statistic. I’d walked this path for five years and never seen a snake. What happened to the safety of my home environment? My overly optimistic brain responded that this had to be a once in five year happening. I sighed with non-convincing relief.
From fear filled imagination to reality, I next ventured. No one around meant I had to be the first set of feet to cross the path the snake had contaminated. Seriously, for me, this was a huge challenge. That was the moment I felt God’s nudge to write about the serpent, Satan. My automatic knee jerk reaction was, “Nope, no way, not a chance.” So shaken by the physical encounter with the object of my greatest fear, I couldn’t (more honestly, wouldn’t) hear or heed the Lord’s confrontation of both my fear and His message. As I RAN across the spot the serpent had slithered over, I closed the book on both my physical fear and any chance of a spiritual message rising from this happenstance. That was until this morn’s lake walk, when God’s message went from a nudging whisper to a rip-roaring, whacking proclamation.
My usual six lap workout was two thirds done, and I was totally in the zone. My ear buds were echoing “YOU Raise Me Up”. Feeling the inspiration of skating to this piece years ago, my arms and legs could have been skimming the ice. Oblivious to all people, places and THINGS, I had floated back to the past when a sheet of ice provided my deepest source for praising God.
Then the tsunami hit. Not ten feet away, but not even ten inches away, the object of my being’s irrational fear was slithering. Worse yet, not a baby like three days ago, this moment’s nemesis was huge, fat, full grown and dead set in collision path with me. My momentum was too fast to brake. Both my unreasonable fear and natural instinct took over. My unreasonable fear produced blood curling screams emitting from my mouth. My natural instinct catapulted my body high into the air and a jump that surpassed even the best distance I ever completed in my old professional days.
As if my total panic performance needed any more embarrassment, this time I was not alone on the path. Don’t know what shocked the spectators of my fiasco more – my over the top screaming fear of a snake or my somehow managing a standing up, safe landing. Truth be told, I surprised myself, too. A total knee and two total hips later, I didn’t think I had it me either!!!
Once more, I felt God’s calling direction. This time I didn’t turn away. Nope. Instead, with clear vision I saw not my life’s fear of a physical worldly snake but the blame owed the serpent of physical and spiritual death. I was brought back to an incident I shared in a manuscript I wrote dealing with grief and Jim’s (my hubby’s) death. I feel it is this writing, not newly scripted words, I am called to share. Doesn’t matter if it is COVID19 or my husband’s death, the slithering snake must take the spotlight of blame. From my manuscript, “NOT A MANUAL BUT EMMANUEL”, I share…..
“Months before even thinking seriously about putting our home on the market, something happened that made me realize grief’s journey has an additional player whom I had overlooked. It had been so natural for me to narrow grief down to six players: Hubby, me, our 3B’s and God. I had completely forgotten the snake!!! That all changed the night I came home from my church small group, and Granddaddy (my father who lives with me) summoned me to his room.
In a serious and authoritative voice, Granddaddy ordered me to take a seat. Next he informed me it was a good thing I had been gone for a couple of hours, because if I had been home, there would be a FOR SALE sign in our yard. Granddaddy continued that since Hubby’s death, I had learned out of necessity to handle spiders and even did a pathetic, but somewhat trying, attempt in regards to the field mouse that found my pantry. However, the three foot snake he discovered in my kitchen earlier that night would have done me in.
Trying to drown my spontaneous hysteria, Granddaddy blared, “It’s gone.” Our neighbor had taken care of it. Staring Granddaddy straight in the eyes, I declared he was only half right. Had I been home, indeed, there would be a FOR SALE sign in our yard, but it also would read VACANT!!!
Actually in the time it took our neighbor to get to our home and Granddaddy to get our dogs outside, that three foot snake had slithered downstairs. Our neighbor found it at the threshold of the room where Hubby died.
As the petrifying picture flashed through my mind, an even bigger reality registered with me. I had failed to realize Satan, the snake, was a significant villain player in grief’s journey. Till that moment, I had failed to associate him as death’s perpetrator. As long as Satan goes unidentified and unbeknown as death’s true cause, one deadly enemy needing to be recognized, and defeated, will continue to wield his sword, striking down the hope of heaven and replacing it with the hell of despair.
Grief is definitely one of the weapons the devil uses to turn us from God and toward him. Satan’s goal is wrongfully putting the responsibility for death in God’s hands, not under his own slithering body, where it truly belongs. Man was not created to die. Man’s first sin in the Garden of Eden introduced death, and Satan choreographed the event. ‘By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.’ (Genesis 3:19)
After Hubby died, I was so caught up in not laying the blame at anyone’s door that I overlooked the devil who hides in the shadow of every threshold of death. I believe it is wrong to allow Satan to hide in the shadow. Quite the opposite, a high powered spotlight needs to illuminate not only his responsibility for all deaths but also his delight in influencing our looking toward God with unsettling questions instead of glaring down him, the evil one, as the ultimate answer of why everyone, including our loved ones, must die.
The devil takes aim and targets a loved one’s death attempting to turn it into a weapon inflicting deep wounds on family left behind. He celebrates when he succeeds in bringing the spiritual and emotional lives of those grieving into a death of their own. Bingo!!! He has killed many birds with one stone, so to speak.
The night that snake tried to slither his way into Hubby’s and my bedroom, I realized my laying the blame for Hubby’s death at no one’s door was a band aid not a cure. From that moment on, I understood one vital phase of the journey through grief is not so much as letting God (and humans too) off the hook but rather as putting the devil on the hook. Blaming no one is a passive band aid. It helps cover the wound but not much more. Blaming Satan is more of an antibiotic leading to a cure. Just as it takes a high powered microscope to discover and pinpoint the cause of many deadly viruses; I repeat, it takes getting Satan out his veiled shadow and into the spotlight to truly fathom that we must lay death’s blame at his belly, not in God’s hands.
Satan slithered in Hubby’s and my bedroom suite the morning Hubby was physically taken from our family, but no way would he take up residence again in my midst. He would not halt my journey through grief. He was the cause the 3B’s and I were forced to begin grief’s journey; but he would not keep me caught in death’s hell-filled snare. Satan is now out of the shadow, revealed and illuminated for the player he is in death.”….
From the then of my grief manuscript to the now of COVID19, not God, but the serpent devil is to blame. My walk three days ago found me too afraid and wanting to blot out my fears to share this message. But God’s call today was, for both me and you, a “not to be silenced” reminder of from where true evil comes and under whose belly rests the blame. When people wonder why God would let such fear and death of this pandemic befall us, may we answer back. The powers of evil might surround us, but God stands ready to uplift and carry us either safely through this worldly virus or beyond it to the reward of our heavenly home.
Two boats beckon us to jump aboard and travel through this deadly storm. One’s captain is a serpent and its sails are set for the death of hades. The other’s Captain is our Savior and His sails are set for either continual life on earth or eternal life in heaven. Which boat will you choose as the Captain of your soul???
Uplifted in a Broken Down World 