Newsletter - Autumn 1993

He is calling me on...

To the Staff and Board of Bountyfull:

I have always felt a closeness, a kinship, with Mary Magdelene. My life has been like hers, both in its former sinfulness and its deep and sincere conversion and devout love of Him ever since. I think of her now, as on Easter morning, standing at the gaping mouth of the empty tomb, weeping. She weeps because the end is so hard to bear. It feels like the end to her. Blinded by her pain and humanness, she does not know that the darkness she looks into is not the end of hope and beauty, but its beginning. I am so like that. I am like that now, looking into the uncertainty of huge change in my life.

I first came to Bountyfull three years ago. I was one year sober, and my life was still - as it had always been - so full of pain, that from day to day I didn't think I could live it. The pain of addiction to drugs and alcohol was not there, but the deeper pain I had carried all my life persisted now, without the relief of drugs and alcohol. I had been going to AA meetings every day and was coming to all the groups which at that time were offered at Bountyfull. Through Step 2 of the AA program I had come to believe that God could and would heal me, if I would seek and develop a relationship with Him and this had become the total commitment and focus of my life. At Bountyfull, He began to reveal to me the deeper ways in which He wanted to change me.

One night during the evening group, Monica led a meditation in which we met someone and asked for a gift. For me, it was God I went before and said, "O Lord for a year now I have tried in every way to be Yours and to follow You, but it seems so little to do with my life. Is there nothing else You want from me? Is there nothing else to do with my life"? And so for my gift, I asked to know my direction. After the meditation, the meeting continued and I gave no more thought to my prayer. When the meeting ended, Larry asked to speak with me, and as he called me into the kitchen, my heart began to pound and I felt guilty and ashamed. I knew what he was calling me in for. He was going to ask me to use the back door instead of the front because, as I had always known deep in my bones, I was not the sort of person anyone would want to be seen coming to their front door - that is how I was, that is who I was. And since Bountyfull was such a "nice" place, I knew I wouldn't be there long, but I was passionate to heal and determined I would come there until they kicked me out. What Larry asked instead was that I come to Bountyfull and be part of the community there - to "walk with" them, as he put it. I accepted that offer and my life has not been the same since. I have healed and grown and changed immeasurably and profoundly through the loving acceptance I found here. Truly God has called me here.

Like Mary at the tomb, I cling and hold on - it's what I do best. What I do most naturally, and over and over God has offered me the loss or the giving up or the letting go of something or someone dear, leaving my heart like the empty tomb. And over and over I have wept bitter tears - I'm sure as bitter as Mary's - of loss and finality. Yet time and time again, He has shown me also that when I have the courage to face and accept the emptiness and pain, it is transformed into love and life. They say that God abhors a vacuum and rushes in to fill it with Himself. I have found this to be so.

Truly God had called me here to Bountyfull. Now He is calling me on - to leave Bountyfull. I don't know to where. I hate it when He calls me. I know all too well now that it's going to mean the pain of staring into the mouth of an empty tomb - some kind of letting go. I hide as long as I can from this call - He's always asking too much it seems. But the experience of repsonding - eventually - has also taught me that to truly suffer - to allow - His call to penetrate me and to respond, transforms me in my deepest being. But it always hurts at first because a part of me has to die before the new life can be born. He is calling. And He isn't telling me where we are going. He just says, "Come, walk on the water. Step out in faith and walk on the water." And so I do. But not without fear and sadness and longing for what I must leave behind. Still it is with the assurance that Jesus gave Mary Magdelene that there will be greater life - life to the full.

I will deeply and truly miss everyone who has touched my life at Bountyfull: friends and associates, board members, and I will especially miss the many clients with whom I have been so privileged and honoured to walk through the sacred ground of their lives. But mostly I will miss Larry, Monica, Elin and now Lynda with whom I have shared so much and through whom God has breathed life and dignity into me.

For when my soul thirsted for God, you showed me where to drink from the living waters of His spirit within me.

When I hungered for love, you each broke for me the bread of your own life.

When I was naked with shame and self hatred, you clothed me with acceptance and taught me to wear the garment of my own beauty and sense of self.

And when I needed a light in the darkness of fear, you held one for me and helped me to uncover my own.

How do I thank you? For what you have given me is my Self. How do I repay such a debt of gratitude? The only way I know, is to pass it on - to give of myself to the world which I touch, wherever I am. I seek to make my life a prayer. You and the love you have shown me - which is stronger than fear or doubt or hate or darkness - will always be a part of my life. And so as I live, I will always be praying for and with you in gratitude and thanksgiving.

This poem is the first piece I ever put into the Bountyfull Newsletter. It seems even more fitting that I say it again now.

When stars burn out
they send their light
they send their life
on into the distance
for nothing really dies
and all the light we have ever shed
upon each other's path
remains
to illuminate the darkness
for all the others.

God bless you all, as you have me.