A ROARING TIDAL WAVE OF TIDBITS,

To accompany the Avalanche of Pebbles

John 6:12..."Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." 

Ps. 26:5-6. "I have hated the congregation of evil doers; and will not sit with the wicked; I will wash my hands in innocency..."

On Wednesday night, October 23, 2024,  me, the woman of God, follower of Christ and still-solitary loner, walked right into the Household of God called... Family.

While I profoundly cherish my home church of Brothers and Sisters in Christ, most of us are Elders, over 60. We love God, His beloved Son and our Christian faith but retain a certain Elder pace, not somnolent but also not rowdy.

 Papa God, being the Father of Fathers and an Expert at rearranging my nearly 72 year old brain, plunked me down into a rambunctious mob of older and younger!  A special multi-church gathering ("Awaken the Dawn") at my own  Church was an unexpected jolt to my "force of habit" and  I was nudged from my comfort perch. Younger Dads and Moms were there (with more than 1.2 children per family),  with little persons busy on the carpeted floor at back of sanctuary with art supplies,  moving back and forth to parent's chairs and then hovered lovingly over by  grownups who often wrapped their little ones in embraces and gentle touches and hugs!  What a wonderful and radical thing in 2024 America and just what little kids need.  This was the profound acknowledgement and healing touch from Mom and Dad that says, wordlessly, “ you are loved, you are accepted, you need not be perfect, we are on this road together and we will work things out day by day, with God’s loving help!”

It was just the jarring I needed, gently shoved off my comfort perch. God can be a rather blunt Guy, at times. Hmmm…

The visiting young Pastor, who headed a music ministry, spoke eloquently of his own journey of doubts and struggles, and how he argued with Papa God  about seemingly impossible impediments. "God!!!  We don't have THIS, we don't have THAT, HOW  are we to DO this You ask us to do??? "  He described how Papa God listened patiently and just smiled while the Pastor unloaded his fears... and the He gently replied, " Are you done?? I've got this!" 

Good grief, I thought this raw blunt girl of nearly 72 was the only one to argue like this with God...

The young Pastor in his impassioned words to God, said " all I've got is this fragment, this scrap, it's nothing!  How can You use this???"

Was he reading both my notes and my mind???  This is just the argument I use with Papa!!  All I have is an avalanche of pebbles, nothing remotely grand or impressive!!! Good grief, how humbling...and made me cry ( lots of things make me cry...)

Then toward the end of the event, Holy Spirit, both my Comforter and my writing Coach,  did an end run on my weekly Substack writing piece that was simmering  in my psyche and coming  together in prep for Friday night publishing. Holy Spirit does this so well. He gently  nudged me and changed the entire tenor of my writing piece. the one I am writing now. I grabbed my pen and began to scribble notes, starting from scratch on Wednesday night.

Certainly in our Western culture, so much of the small and seemingly invisible has been dismissed, deplored, disrespected, kept from the table, in favor of the  “high and the mighty”. The " scraps" are useless, cast away and castoffs. They are directed to the the scrap heap, disabused of any worth and treated as impediments in the way of grand, social-rearrangement plots to forcefully change the world into something dark and unrecognizable.  If we resist, we are  "bigots",  "nazis", “deplorables”, the terrible and un-hip.

I have long felt like a pebble, awash in the overwhelming pressure to DO, to BE, to ACHIEVE by " crushing the competition." I wrote a piece several months back on Substack, about an “Avalanche of Pebbles” and this is an extention of that.

No thanks to the crush, I do not have "crush" in my temperament or vocabulary.  The core  natural family is scorned, the small cast aside for the next hipster  thing that has no roots and is soon dislodged because it it not fully secured and anchored in the soil. I have most assuredly “been there and done that” on more than one occasion, hence what I write about in my own A Blunt Oregon Girl Substack.

I have spent much of my own nearly 72 years in both retreat and battle mode, running to keep the basics afloat, with almost no hope for anything more than survival.

I continue to believe there remains an incredible longing in the human heart....to belong, to be loved, to be cherished by close family.  The condemnation and crumbling of the core Male-Female family structure has been under relentless assault and little kids are just cast off and struggle to find a place, much less belong and feel loved despite their flaws. We are seeing firsthand in our Western culture, the staggering cost of this disabusement of the core structure of men and women, the profound disrespect for both genders.

Much of my survival mode/ battle mode has been grim, not charming.

Seeing this small mob of little persons, reasonably allowed to be kids and be covered in so much love and acknowledgement, plus the primal figure eight of man and woman together creating life and raising it through the storms, this brought tears to my eyes.

I never had that. I have had one long term partnership but no children from it and  no formal marriage. A good man but not my husband or father of any kids.

Likely it is too late for me... but I cherished the beauty of seeing one man-one woman in the covenant of marriage, throwing their scraps-fragments-tidbits to God for Him to use. There was not a "tidbit" of arrogance anywhere in that evening. There was only the crying out of sons and daughters of God, to ask Him and His Son to help us to be His conduits to the sorrowful and the brokenhearted of the world, not through condemnation or castigation but through Isaiah 61:1, in which Isaiah speaks of the coming Messiah Who will " bind up the brokenhearted.” We Christians believe Jesus Christ is just that Messiah and that He indeed does just that, binds up the brokenhearted, starting with each of us. Even in my raw and blunt state, I have found that the Lord Jesus and His Papa do just that, bind up my broken heart, over and over again and use my sorrows to create beauty out of ashes. It is not “presto-chango”, it is laborious and hard work, step by step. Only God can do that! He truly walks with you through the “valley of the shadow of death” and OUT THE OTHER END! No camping out in sadness (me too…)

Dearest young men and women, struggling to belong, to feel needed and valued for your humanity, just slowly begin to pray, to cry out to God for humble repentance and salvation first and then His plan and gifting unique to you!  Seek a solid church in which you feel heard and respected. Begin to ask God to guide you to a marriage partner of husband or wife.  If you have first endeavored to fill up on God, you will be less likely to expect another human to fulfill your needs and  it will be somewhat easier to blend a figure eight of  complimentary opposites of male and female. From there can come little persons you love, protect, guide, care for and raise to responsible adulthood.  An arduous task, completely...but do-able with God as the core Guide of your marriage partnership and His Hand on the wheel of your lives entwined

Papa is a Master of transforming human scraps, fragments and tidbits into working human beings in love with God and His Son.

Papa, PLEASE wrap me in Your arms of innocency and purity and use my sorrowful learnings to help others to stay on the narrow path. If nothing else, let me be a guidepost of humble reflection of the negative results of wandering and rebellion and offer encouragement to those coming up behind me.

Somehow, my fragments, scraps, tidbits and pebbles can help at least one other dear person.  That is the core desire of my heart, before God brings me Home.

Wendy Elizabeth Williams    October 25, 2024

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