Wondering about my Wanderings

So she say she is going to hell anyway

Lots to consider. The woman who said this was my supervisor and it was not the first time I heard anyone say this. It was awful easy to want to put my preacher hat on and see what I could do to help. She was obviously in a rough spot.

I am learning that sometimes it is better to follow your heart. She had been there for me on numerous occasions, especially when my mom was dying. She had a genuine concern for my situation.

My thought is to trust that the spirit of God would work through in God's perfect time. One thing she and everyone knew from the beginning was that I was the preacher on campus. I think that role pushed everyone to expect things. I had worked security for a number of years and learned if I pushed a spiritual agenda I could lose my job.

In this case I decided to work at accepting Glenda. After all she accepted me warts and all. I noticed that she had tattoos all over her arms and therefore had to wear long sleeves. She had piercings on her tongue and elsewhere. Over time I learned she did not even want to be a supervisor. The director saw her as the best person for the job.

Over time I saw things in a new way. I believe it was with God's eyes. I had made a mistake at an earlier time with a woman who cast herself in hell, because she thought her belief was so different from me. From that moment we were officially excommunicated from each other. I was stubborn in those days and I thought if she was so headstrong I could and would not do anything to change her mind.

Glenda was different. She was there when she saw me clearly being harassed by another supervisor, she was there when I let a battery run out on the company car and got it fixed with help and knew enough not to correct me. I felt badly enough. Most recently she saw me downcast and tried to cheer me up.

I am learning that God sees in myself and another what I am blind to see otherwise. At the previous setting I took what was said very personally. I was with her at a halfway house in the seventies and she used my pastoral role to embrace a gay man who happened to be sleeping in the same room as I was. She said she would rather be in hell with him than with someone like me. It was the end of the discussion. She did not even ask my Opinion????

I will no doubt see things from another vantage point as I mature. I currently work with a caregiver who feels like God is against her due to her being harassed by a nurse. She hurts and feels like she is in hell. I pray for the Glendas, and the caregiver and the woman who did the best she could to put me in my right place (as far away from her and her gay friend as possible). More and more it is about relationship. If I want to show one how to be with God I need to act like God as I am learning to love God. Through prayer and a caring presence they can discover with me that the same love that brings us together brings us back together again.