Fringeville Edition #76, September 02 2012

Seeking an epiphany...

I'm at one of those moments when I'm questioning everything. When I've lost my way. When the ground seems to have fallen out from beneath my feet because all I knew about the world has turned upside-down.

This has happened before.

In the past I've cured it with a long walk. I don't mean a little jaunt around the block. I mean a long, difficult slog. (Anything over a mile for a guy with OI and no knees or ankles is a long, difficult slog indeed.)

I once walked from Pittston to Plains in winter to get my gas can and funnel from the shed. Then I hoofed it from my neck of town to a gas station for $5 worth of gas. From there to the shopping plaza on River Road to gas up our only car, which had run out earlier in the day, stranding my wife until her mother rescued her. These were probably the most difficult financial days in our lives up to that point. There wasn't much money to be had. Day to day, life was a struggle. Peter was robbed regularly to pay Paul, and both these fellows were getting pretty irritated. Our car had an unreliable gas gauge, and I'd forgotten to put gas in it the night before. That's how I ended up on my little trek.

I hadn't meant to walk that distance. I'd only intended to walk to a bus stop and then get close enough to home to call someone for a ride. But somewhere between the office and the bus stop something started to change. The walk and the cold winter air sparked my thoughts even as my body wore down. By the time I finally got home, I was bone-dead-tired but I had a course charted and was determined to follow it. I'd had an epiphany. Over time things did get slowly better, but I sometimes wonder what would have happened without that long, long walk. Would I ever have found my way out of what seemed to be an endless, perilous forest?

I'm in that zone again. I'm been looking for that epiphany. I've walked a bit, but I physically can't do the distance I once could with what's left of my legs.

Just when I reached the point of surrender, I found myself at church. Just a regular Sunday Mass. I didn't have that big epiphany, but something happened. Something spoke to my heart. Here is the essence of what was revealed to me:

Do not look to mankind for truth. Look to God.

Admit your faults and weaknesses to God. God knows them already, but until you say them out loud, until you are truthful with yourself, you're going to have a hard time finding the path God has prepared for you.

That's all I've been able to put into words so far, but there is much more below the surface. And those two little gems don't look like much until you really put some thought into them. The way I see it, God's going to feed me things in bits and pieces and wait for me to catch on and catch up.

Hopefully, I've been humbled enough to listen to Him this time...

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