The Good Stuff

March 1, 2013

Back last summer, when folks first started hearing the news about Lori’s cancer, they begin to wonder at the faith it took for Lori, Bryan, and the girls to handle that kind of life-Trouble so well -- in such a God-glorifying way.  Now this was big T trouble, the biggest trouble you ever saw, the kind of trouble that seems bigger than the whole world, overwhelming trouble. And when people would ask Bryan where they found the faith to deal with this, he would say, “It’s not a new faith. It’s the same faith we always had.  It’s not like we've got the Good Stuff back in the closet that we've been saving for times like these.  We haven’t been holding back. This is all the faith we have…it better be good enough.” If you go to our little church, or you are friends with Bryan, you have heard this story before.

So please forgive me, Bryan tells this story much better than I do.  In fact, I still get kind of broken up inside when I hear Bryan tell it, or I hear John Brown tell it, or I see the girls and Ed and Maxine continue to live it out. But no matter how much I've heard this story, no matter how much I understand the wisdom in it, no matter how much I nod my head and say “Amen!” to the truth of their witness…I got to be honest with you, I still find myself rummaging around in my personal storage and part-time prayer closet looking for the Good Stuff.

And if I can’t find what I am looking for in there, I go to my spiritual medicine cabinet and I pull out all the out-of-date prescription bottles and the vitamins-going-bad, and I go through every bottle one by one. I hold them up to the vent-a-hood light over the stove and try to decipher the fading label and dosage instructions that always seem to be written in fine print for old men to read.  Yes, I’m still looking for the Extra-Strength pain killers.

And some days, quite often lately it seems, I wake to find myself sleep-walking, actually sleep soul-searching the cabinets of our utility room, standing on my tip toes on the little step stool we keep in the downstairs bathroom for potty-training grandkids, reaching as high as I can and digging as deep as I can through those dusty shelves, looking for the Counter-cleaner Concentrate, the Good Stuff, the Ultra-Strong Faith.  I know it’s in there somewhere.