It Is GOOD To Be Me...


(my daughter Hannah, and her boyfriend Justin)



(Hannah and Sarah-opening gifts from loving grandparents-matching diamond necklaces)

I am still savoring the memory of a long dinner table at Carabba's (a chain restaurant, Italian, full of darkly stained wood and twinkle lights, with a wood burning pizza oven)...


...fourteen family members crowding the table in the back room we had reserved - each one laughing, each one loving the other. I felt brimful of joy, celebrating my twin daughters' 21st birthdays. We toasted their past, present and future, just by being there, in the moment, with them. We finished a long, lingering dinner with birthday cake, gifts, and hugs all around. What a season of Harvest I am in!


The character "Nacho" in the movie Nacho Libre said, "It sucks to be me!" All personal fears and healthy introspection aside - it is so fantastic to be me lately! I don't always like what I see in my own heart, and I want to pull every weed that threatens to make me barren and unfruitful. But that is only because the fruitful places are so, so satisfying. I want more of this rather charmed, blessed-and-highly-favored kind of life. It certainly has never "sucked" to be me.



I sit here, wanting to convey the very opposite of Nacho's sentiment, fingers poised over the keyboard searching...I've been wracking my brain to think of one word, a verb, that can mean the opposite of "sucks". Why is it, our English language can come up with negative slang like that, but there is no ready, tongue-in-cheek, joy-filled phrase I can quickly grab, to tell you how utterly sweet my life is these days?


It "glories" to be me.


It "shines" to be me.


It "smiles" to be me.


It "sparkles" to be me.


??



In the end, only one word comes to mind. A word that my teen and twenty-something children would identify with. It would not be the word I would choose - I'm far too artsy. It takes zero creative genuis for a middle aged woman to speak the language of, and partake in the frenetic activities of the upcoming generation. That requires no sense of hard-won personal style. It takes no unique spark whatsoever - you simply follow the lead of your children, all in the name of "relating to them". I can find more thoughtful, delightful, creative and appropriate ways of relating to my children, ways that do not blur the lines between youth and the seasoned elegance of age...


And relate we do, my children and I! We are close, even though I'm no Facebookie. I have a Facebook page. I promise you, however, that there is a large difference between my Facebook page, and that of my teenager's. They don't look anything alike. I don't send pots of virtual herbs, or little buttons, and accept no applications, so don't feel badly if you never get a virtual trinket from me. In addition, something inside me feels sorry for anyone, of any age, who "rates" a friendship, as in "who is the coolest" . My fifteen year old does it, but even my 21-year-olds find it a tad bit pathetic. Ranking precious people in your life, is a sad concept for a twelve year old to ponder, much less a grown woman. A Mother in Zion would never. I watch over my youngest children in the Facebook/Myspace world - it is the real reason I even have a presence there. Life is not all about "Me, Myspace, and I".


So it is with a sense of reluctance I borrow some Young Slang. It is the only word that, honestly, really fits what I am trying to say:


It so rocks to be me!


Well, it does. If you have a better word, do suggest it. Being me is the best, because patience is having her growing-up work in me. I have no need to be younger, richer, or better than the rest. Patience does make you "mature and complete". Henri Nouwen said “...patience means willingness to stay where we are and live out the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.” I am learning to love life as God gives it. THAT is why it rocks to be me.



This present season, this present day, this very moment comes to me "trailing clouds of glory"...brand new, baby-fresh. This season, once passed, will be personal history, with only the memories to mark it. This day, once the sun sets, will consist of random impressions, neurons firing in my brain, recalling scent, emotion, flashes of sights and sounds. All that will be left of this day are words written in a journal, and a blog entry. This day will also leave behind the fruit of every word I spoke from the time I awoke, till the time I go back to bed. "May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, oh Lord!"



I will never live this day again. It contains a gift or gifts that God intensely desires for me to open and learn from. Most of His gifts are educational, in some fashion or other, even the seemingly frivolous gifts like puppies and cherries. No one else can live my life with me, experiencing this blessed and favored thing called "being me". No one else is in my skin, no one else but God Himself is, in reality, part of the fiber of my spiritual being. So if I don't tackle this day's joys as they skip past me, who will taste them, touch them, see and hear them?



It rocks to be me. I am so grateful for these present moments. God is good. Tell me....does it out-and-out rock to be you? You ought to know it! Believe it. Live like it.

4 comments:

Chris Welch - 07000INTUNE said...

Sheila,
I think this birthday celebration sounds like a "more than" event.

maybe a "pressed down, running over" event.

I can cope with rocks.

I'd been converted and baptised in the Spirit a few years and had a few of these awesome Body gatherings around a table in different people's homes...

then I joined Emsworth and lived in community for the best part of 10 years...and you know what...although the meetings WERE TRULY out of this world, and new songs were pouring out of about 5-8 of us....I missed those adhoc, spontaneous, with one another cos we really love each other type of table gatherings that we'd had around my home town and later at Uni. Melchizedek, Holy Spirit turn up suddenly kind of gatherings.
And I was quite knocked for 6. Actually so knocked for 6 that I eventually went up into the North Wales mountains to seek God and get an answer. And if you've been reading Dan's stuff...broadly you will know what God has spoken to me: that, indeed, the stuff we're in now is NOT IT...praise God..and He IS indeed engineering His Body to live more and more in this strange spontaneous Melchizedek order and literally, the world over His Body will be a city without walls...where you and I will be welcome and welcome one another, and to quote Maurice Smith, the riches of each one will become the available treasure of us all.

Liz Overton said...

What an inspiring post! God has been teaching me a lot lately about living in the present. Instead of constantly thinking ahead to the next thing or next season, I need to learn to be joyfully content and praise God in my present situation, whatever that may be. I don't want to miss a thing that God has for me in any season of my life, yet my thoughts and actions would often prove otherwise.

I've definitely had seasons where I was totally convinced that it rocked to be me, those seasons where one feels on top of the world, but I'm certainly not always convinced of that in my day-to-day living. And although I wouldn't say that I've been totally convinced of that lately, it's true. It does rock to be me. I'm a beloved child of the King, blessed far beyond what I deserve, journeying with God through this adventure we call life. It does rock to be me.

Chris Welch - 07000INTUNE said...

There are times, ironically enough, when we are pressing into God, when we feel the exact opposite of rocking. Ed Miller writes a parable on this called The Prince and the Pauper....but in today's Times paper are some amazing extracts from Mother Theresa's Diaries which are exactly the same...definitely not rocking at all...

Sheila Atchley said...

Thanks for the comments, guys!
YES, Liz, you are God's daughter, His delight. It rocks to be you! :-)

I realize this blog entry can seem like a far-less-than-intellectual posting, but the facts are, as mere mortals we are very tied to our experience. Our experiences in life "tell us" things about ourselves, and they are often inaccurate.

So if you "get it", the fact that it rocks to be you, even when it so does NOT seem to....then you get the whole point of this post.

"Let patience have her perfect work, that you might be mature and complete, lacking NOTHING."

How do we reach a place in God where we actually perceive that we lack nothing? by patience. Patience accepts "what is", believing that there is a gift to this present season, present day, present moment. there is something to be gained. There is a joy in the journey, and there is a healing to be discovered, even in the worst of times.

God will often as not lead us smack into circumstances that feel less than "rocking". Do we rock there? Can we?

Even when it feels like (in that inimitable Nacho phrase) "it sucks to be me", it rocks to be me. Get it?

The secret of Godliness WITH contentment is *great gain*. We are actually touching on profound issues here...