What a comfort it is to remember. Of course, being obedient is always a comfort and we are commanded to remember God’s commandments, and his works and deliverances. A part of that is remembering what our story is. After all He has written it. I find it difficult at times being uprooted in a land that is not my own. A bit like being a tulip bulb that was transplanted in the wrong season, trying to put down roots and getting a bit dehydrated. I am bewildered by a culture that is not my own. I don't have any of the survival instincts here. It is like walking into room while someone is in the middle of long story and having to guess what the beginning of the story was. Imagine that story was an unabridged Dostoyevsky novel. The guessing soon turns to utter confusion and mental collapse, and a desire to leave the room. I am beginning to realize that my problem is trying to guess the beginning of the centuries long novel of culture, war, chaos, church compromise, revival, and self misdiagnosed idiosyncratic class sensitivities, not that it hurts to try to learn a bit of history. The best solution is to remember my own story, and that walking into the middle of the Dostoyevsky novel is part of it. While wandering an English Street wondering why in the world everybody here is behaving the way they are, a sudden memory of say. . . my Grandfather’s chuckle, Presbyterians in the south, tracking turtles at midnight, jumping in a leaf pile in a homemade jumper, listening to blues in a hoodie, and eating corn dogs at a fair, not to mention psalm singing around bonfires in Idaho, crazy dancing to CCR during kitchen cleanup with my siblings, and singing medieval Latin songs at night with college buddies, hits me like a bucket of ice water over the head. Every bit of it is who I am and it is for some unknown reason, the back story to my current situation, and if you think of the lead up, the story ought to be pretty entertaining. After all, a good author never puts things in a story for no reason. Somehow, this has all lead up to me, the up-a-tree-bookworm of erstwhile, who did eventually learn how to navigate a doorway without hitting one side of it, in training to be a vicar’s wife in the church of England. The funny thing about it is that everybody currently entering stage right doesn’t know my story either. So, I am the only one in on the ironic moments. Since the scope of my story is much smaller than the one I seem to be joining, it is much easier for me to lose hold of it in the tangle of plots. Sometimes the only remedy is listening to bluegrass in my kitchen with the volume turned up.
