Meandering Streams and Wandering Thoughts.
21 February 2013
Set down this evening about half lost in thoughts and daydreams and the other half reliving the reality of the recent season. As if by cue as I get to my journal site I find they have changed the writing format to a new one which although better I am sure is much more of a pain to me because I am unable to enlarge the print. I don't know whether to get upset or just laugh it off. There was a rally in our state capitol yesterday I had been looking forward to for months but my health once again got in the way. It is interesting since my strokes in 2010 how many major events in my life I have been sidelined for. On Tuesday I spent the afternoon in a meeting with my neurosurgeon and at the conclusion of it decided regretfully to abandon plans for sexual reassignment surgery forever. Due to my health and complications from my strokes I would probably never survive the operation and I have way too much to live for. I guess I could have a really nice pity party about now but I would just have to repent about it later. It really strikes me funny as I get on all the different christian chat sites by how much negativity and pessimism there is. It seems as if everyone wants the rest of the world as miserable as they are. I have been christian my whole adult life and even through the hard times it has been the river of joy inside me that has kept me going and has given me strength in the dark places. I thought that is what having a Father-daughhter relationship with the Creator meant, He/She didn't make us just to watch us be miserable. We, my wife and I, just joined a very small and yet vibrantly live church named "Open Door Community Fellowship" here in Louisville. No great radio or TV ministries, no professional worship team or ministry teams and at at this point no children's programs and yet there is more genuine love and the vibrancy of lives filled with hope and a passion for being sons and daughters of God than in any church I have been associated with. The pastor works a fulltime job besides pastoring the church and she freely shares the privilege and responsibility of bringing God's Word to the church. The worship team is much the same thing and yet the main constant within this group of people is thier bubbly joy of the Lord and His residing Presence in this old church building full of misfits, outcasts and lepers (in the eyes of the world).There is this stream of life that flows through my life experiences taking countless turns and bends with the ebbs and flows of my heart. It started at birth as a trickle from the Throneroom and has been an underground spring for great sections of time and yet always there. There were times when it broke through to the surface in cascades of bubbling energy. In recent years it has been like a brook after a spring rain bursting out of it's banks and washing debris away with it. It is the waters of life called "My true identity". It is early morning now and I am witing for my wife to return from takiing her sons to work and I find my thoughts drifting back to a time when I was the one going to work each day struggling to make ends meet not just fnacially but relationally. It takes work to sincerely invest your life into those you love. Just as the circle of life is a continually unfolding journey so are the seasons of my own life. I now find myself kissing her goodbye and I am the one staying behind, I am the one concerned about her being safe in the inclement weather. Now I am the homemaker trying to provide a safe haven full of love for her to return to each day. My daughter has half jokingly tagged me " a hormonal mess" and I receive the label gladly. After so many years of hiding who I am I find it quite refreshing. I have found my place in life and it isn't anything grand or earth shattering but rather like the stream that runs through it my life has a quiet constancy that may ebb and flow at times but is always there just below the surface. I think of sowing and reaping and I look at my present marriage and find that I am reaping from the first marriage an intimate and loving relationship only this time a wife and it brings me great joy. I find myself being blessed by the smallest things like a kiss, a hug or holding hands and whisper small prayers of thanks for bringing such a beautiful and loving woman into my life and for rekindling the embers of my dying heart after my first wife's passing in 2008. I hear my grandson stirring upstairs and I consider this child so full of promise, he will not know what being predjudiced or bigoted means and he will be a defender of justice and equality because he is being raised in a home where those things are lived out on a daily basis. In his life he has more "aunts" in his short life than I ever even knew existed. He loves them as people not as male or female, pre-op or post-op. He just knows he is safe and he is surrounded in love. The other side of this is watching how his blind acceptance of my sisters has affected and even encouraged them in return. Our home isn't perfect and with three women living together it is an emotional rollercoaster and yet through it all love transcends the chaos, the bumps and obstacles, and rules it with an undercurrent of unconditional love and understanding. I think of my journey into womanhood so far and consider all the prices I paid to get here but also I look at all the unexpected blessings I have received as well. I lost my sonsd and their families, my siblings, my ministering in my former home church, my former friends from a former life and yet as I look upon the scales of balance I see that I have a new family filled with brothers and sisters with an unconditional love, I have friends who take me as I am and I have found a new church home, though much smaller by headcount, in which I can invest the gifts and talents God has blessed me with. I have come to a place in my journey where my stream is filled with life, laughter and joy and it drives me on to give myself to all those around me. I am not ruled by a timeclock or countless obligations but I am driven by a desire to leave a living legacy of my life in others as I strive to fulfil my destiny. My world is filled with a kaleidiscope of people within countless belief systems and yet there is a unity of the spirit that brings stability in relationships with no masks or hidden agendas. I consider the "christians" i grew up around in former times and there were always masks of respectability and plastic smiles and I am so thankful that at this juncture I am surrounded by real people with real emotions that they aren't afraid to show. It is so refreshing to see tears and honest pleas for help and understanding or just a hearing ear. I really believe Jesus would have enjoyed hanging out with us, He always was drawn to real people with real emotions. We have not because we ask not, that can include love and acceptance if we are to fearful to ask for it. At the end of the day, and of this posts as I gaze upon the scales and balances I know I have chosen wisely, I have life abundant right now in this life. Be Blessed in all you set your heart to and always be true ti the dreams inside you.
Charlena Marie Andrews-Hayes
