Feet On the Ground

I stood awkwardly. Twiddling thumbs, eyes downcast, shifting weight from foot to foot. Hands with no urge to raise, tear ducts out of use. It has been an eternity since I’ve been in a church service because I wanted to be there. No commitments. No one expecting my presence. Just going because there was a tug.

So I expected a lightning bolt. Either to evoke fear or inspiration, I wasn’t sure, but I waited for it to strike.

Nothing.

I felt a calmness seep in, and with it also came an uncomfortable expectation. My life has felt so complicated for so long, and everything felt too…easy. Simple. As the singers gazed upward with rapt attention and admiration, I wondered if the whole business was as painless as they made it appear.

And then the melody of the song that always comes to mind when I’m stressed began to play. The song that God uses to comfort me flowed from the pianist’s fingers and out the speakers and into my ears and over my soul. In that instant, I realized that the most complex, encompassing subject in the world is also an elementary principle.

I am saved.

It’s totally Christian jargon. And completely appropriate. Not as in one instant years ago, but every day. I am saved from countless horrors and evils and devastations. I am saved from religion, from apathy, from brutality. Maybe most of all, I’m saved from myself. From trying to understand absolutely everything, which gets complicated fast.

Life doesn’t make sense. Trying to decode it is folly.

So I left uninspired by the message because I was too tired to understand it. Woefully unmoved by the scripture on the page. Slightly welcomed by people who didn’t really miss me and weren’t thrilled when I showed up, but oddly comforted to be in a group who believes the same thing. More or less.

Ultimately, I left feeling a million times better than when I arrived.

I remembered that I was rescued. Then, now, way back when and ten years within the future. My status wil never change, and when it all gets to be too much again, I just have to think of my place in the fairy tale.