There
once was a young girl who had grown up in the church her whole life.
Every
Sunday she would sit in the pew and look up at the preacher as he stood in
front of the congregation preaching the words;
“God created you, Jesus loves
you, the Holy Spirit is calling you.”
Every week she came. And sat. And listened.
He’s talking to me she thought;
“God created me, Jesus loves me, the Holy
Spirit is calling me.”
Then slowly, so slow no one even noticed, these thoughts turned into beliefs and these beliefs turned into faith that faith fed her Being in a way that caused her legs and arms to grow long, and her feet
and hands to grow wide, and her neck and head to reach high.
As more Sunday’s
passed her Being continued to grow.
One day a strength from inside of her began to silence the words of the preacher with a Voice bound up just behind the borders of her unknowing lips.
This voice
chattered her teeth and teased her tongue so that each Sunday she would bit her lips together and
swallow it diligently.
And so the words
she swallowed served as seeds planted in her soul and-
“God created me, Jesus
loves me, the Holy Spirit is calling me”
-became the beat of her heart.
Only the
more she swallowed her Voice the louder the beat of heart until it
grew so loud and her Being grew so big no matter how quiet she tried to be,
no matter how small she tried to make herself, she could no longer fit through the
doors of her church.
Some people were afraid of her and so they pretended not
to see her struggling to get inside as they quietly crept around her and
entered the church.
Some people were angry at her for becoming so big and loud.
They called her a distraction and yelled at her to become small again so she
could enter in and sit quietly like they had taught her.
Still, a few had
compassion and waited with her as she wept, for no matter how hard she prayed
or wished or worked she could not silence the beating song of her heart or
shrink the size of her Being.
“What good is this beating heart? What good is my
growing Being?”
she asked The Few.
Together they wondered,
“What good is her
beating heart? What good is her growing Being?”
And as they sat and waited for
her song to quiet, for her Being to shrink, her falling tears washed over the
ground, and onto the Beings of The Few, and slowly they too began to grow until
their hands sat in her hands as a child’s would. And what once was the muffled
sound of a far off beating drum became clearer;
“God created me, Jesus loves
me, the Holy Spirit is calling me”
And The Few began to understand the Good of
the beating heart and the Good of the growing Being.
They held her hand and
they touched her hair and they whispered into her ear, “Now what, young one? Now
where will you go?”
She looked from the church
door to the sidewalk,
and from the sidewalk to the road, and from the road to
the houses,
and from the houses to the horizon,
and gently she spoke with her
voice that had always listened,
“I am not sure where it is I will go.
But I know
I will go with my God who created me,
carried by the Jesus loves me,
because of
the Holy Spirit who is calling me.”
