Hanging Out in the The Twilight Zone

(morning light from my balcony a few years ago)

I've been trying to write this next post now for two days but for some reason there is a block. I've erased three different tries already! I think what is happening is that it takes me a lot of time to think things through, to read, contemplate, analyze, emotionalize, and it dawned on me last night that my life got relocated to the twilight zone.  I'm off balance, I would like my old life back because it was predictable and familiar.  Things don't feel the same inside; and I can't predict when they will run their course as I normally would with something like the flu because this came from the infusion center at the Sharp Reese Stealy Outpatient Hospital Pavilion.  I liken it to what you might expect if the formaldehyde that pickled the frog for junior high biology class was transferred to a plastic tube and inserted through a needle into your veins for a few hours...so here I am.

My neck is exposed to the world now; more wrinkles than I used to notice, and who is that woman standing in the kitchen (they get confused). I do miss cooking, my little domain. There have been thankfully only two real "you have to remain horizontal or pay the price" chemo days in this first go around, thankfully, but what's leftover isn't quite the same. Lately I don't go to work, shop, exercise, make dinner as often, give a ride, attend, I've just been waiting for the next strange sensation of pain,  or  maybe for a super nice person to show up at my door. The Twilight Zone!

So what's next? I just heard that there is a young woman somewhere out there who just had all of her hair removed and that in some way reading my last post was an encouragement. Well if that isn't making lemonade out of lemons then I don't know what is! Only I am not even where she is yet...I'm suspended between two places... not my long- haired self or the honeydew melon I will soon be. Am I kicked out of the chosen few then (see last post)? Am I not contemplating God's amazing grace when I look in the mirror each morning?

Actually my mirror looking is with a great deal of wonder, at how so much hair can deny gravity by standing up straight! (Part of the Zone) And yes I am contemplating God's amazing grace in my  beloved recliner camp chair that Ben brought home for me to plant myself in for long periods of time when needed.  It dawned on me that I am experiencing what the lepers did when the drops of blood were placed on their ear lobe, thumb and big toe in the cleansing ritual. Though they did not realize that this act foreshadowed the actions of God's Son who would bleed in all of those places in order to secure absolute acquittal for all of their filth, their participation and blind acceptance of it placed them in line for the grace yet to come.  My short, almost gone hair puts me in line too for the real thing, which is apparently right around the corner.

I feel strongly that a time like this is definitely a time to divide the history of one's life, the time before and the time after, let them be different. Let's move beyond where we were, not come back to hair and cooking and work with our understanding of our place in the cosmos still the same. Since we have been set aside, let's consider it all. You see, twilight is the reflection of the sun from beneath the horizon where it illuminates the features of the sky like a spotlight  set beneath a stage. Though we might normally think of twilight as the end of the day, the winding down of something that was once bright, it could just as well be considered the light of the the sun that illuminates and beautifies by casting a rainbow of shadows for the hope of a new day. That's where my heart is.  Jesus said, "Behold, I make all things new."

Just how new? I don't think any of us actually live with a full understanding of what that means, including myself. I was always told as child that God loved me, and my parents loved me so it was easy to believe.  But like anyone else, I'm painfully aware of my faults. No matter who you are, you are aware that there is some moral standard that you have failed to keep. By the way, I know beyond any doubt that there are some very smelly, dirty looking people who are much more aware of this gap than others who regularly put an iron to their clothes.  Does that gap bother you? Feel guilty? I do sometimes more than others. When I do stop to think about it I feel worse; being too busy to contemplate is a temporary pain killer but it never heals.

New means new, unused, completely different than the old. What happened to God's Son, the blood He shed, the life He gave, makes all things new. That means that your and my right standing before God can be made completely new. When the head is bald, can you style the hair? Straighten it? Condition it? Do SOMETHING to it? No, and that is exactly the same way it is with our cleanness in God's eyes. We literally cannot contribute. Do you get that? Honestly I'm grasping at it.

 If you've ever seen John 3:16 at a football game,

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

well this is what it means. God loved us so much that He gave His Son to die in our place so that our guilt before Him could be completely eliminated. Short of believing this and receiving it, you can't contribute, it's too big.  Our pride is too big really, that might be the largest obstacle of all. But if you will, watch the morning unfold while you mull this over. Think about your right standing with God. It is possible. You cannot contribute. You can only accept it and thank Him for it. And especially if slowing down reminds you of all your faults...be assured that You are loved anyhow, just as you are right now with all of the wrong things you have ever done still being a part of your history or your present.

Now, what to do with all of those guilt burdens which have indeed transgressed God's moral law, besides just wish they had never happened? That sounds like something good to talk about next time... in the Twilight Zone.

Revelations 21:5
Romans 5:19
John 1:3
Hebrews 2:14
Hebrews 4:15