Finding God

Are you there God, its me. As I kneel in the chapel of the school, I look up at the cross above the altar. Each time I come to find comfort, I ask the same question. I know what I have been taught. I know what I have read, but often times I feel distant from the truth. I am not by any stretch of the imagination in agony or physical suffering as someone might define it. I just need reassurance that I am on the right path. Days go by and run into weeks as school progresses. My studies seem to overlap one another. All the time I am still thinking, still searching for that small grain of truth. I have seen things that I cannot explain, things that others would readly dismiss as coincidence, yet I know that it wasn't just happenstance. I feel it somewhere deep down inside that it was a divine signal. I just cannot get a grasp on the singular kernal of truth that lies at the center of the whole thing.

My semester has come to an end. I am headed home for a break. My parents will be glad to see me; my siblings will want to hear stories about school and what it is like to be out of a small town. Despite the break, I still feel an uneasiness in my spirit. I feel as though I am incomplete. I am not sure what is missing, am I just going through lifes motions? So many questions that I wrestle with. I feel like I am battleing myself, yet there is something else. I feel something pulling me one way then another.

The bus takes me 7 hours to get back to a sleepy little country town where time seems to stand still. I started early in the morning and now it is late afternoon. We pull into the station, and I see the station wagon with my parents parked under a shade tree. My brother and sister will be at my Grand Parents house because they are still in school for another month. They will take the bus over because my parents came to pick me up. I step off of the bus into the heat of summer. They call it spring, but summer comes early here some years. You can cut the air with a knife the haze is so thick. I stretch my back, I am stiff from sitting on the bus for so long. My mom is just waving a handkerchief as if I didn't see her. There is little wind, but her moving around makes her pale dress move as if it were possessed. You would think after 3 years of school she would be used to me coming home, but despite the fact that I will be a senior next term, my parents still insist on being the first ones to meet me. I guess they want to be the ones to hear all of my stories first, or perhaps it is something deeper than that. Something I cannot quiet understand yet.

I walk over to my parents and my mother hugs me and looks me up and down. She messes up my hair and feels my shoulders. She exclaims how thin I look and asked what they are feeding me up at that school. My dad just stays to the side and grins ever so coyly. He wants to say something, but he knows better than to interrupt my mom as she fauns over on me. After a moment of public humiliation, dad offers me his and hand and says glad to have you back son. We get into the car and are off to my grandparents. I am still in a jacket and tie because that is how students are expected to dress at the university. My guidance counselor as well as my instructors always remind us that we will be the future leaders of America and that we should dress accordingly. That meant that I had to learn to sew, so I could keep my own clothes properly mended. My train of thought is interrupted as my dad says we have arrived. I hear the screen door squeaking as it opens up. My sister and brother come running out of the house. My sister is almost as bad as my mom. She is the middle child but despite her maturing, she is never too proud to give me an airtight hug. My little brother on the other hand just has an about time you got here look on his face. My grand mother has likely spent all day cooking a feast fit for Henry the VIII and all he wants to do is eat until his trouser buttons burst. As I am stopped in the moment, somehow it seems all surreal. For a second, I can almost see time stop. Then a feeling of calm sweeps over me and it is if someone has started a motion picture reel back. The sights and sounds of everything all at once I guess have overwhelmed my senses. I dismiss it and go on into the house where my grand parents are waiting and I am the guest of honor.

We spend what feels like hours eating and talking. The food disappears quickly enough but there is more in the kitchen. I will be eating leftovers for days. The sun has gone down and my grand mother has fixed a place for us to sleep in the floor. Mom and dad will get the spare bedroom. My younger siblings are weary from all of the excitement and gorging themselves. My mom and grandmother are busy in the kitchen. Dad eases out on to the front porch with my grandfather and myself. We sit in the cool of the night with a bright yellow moon and the stars for lights. The dim street lights in the distance create an eerie backdrop. My grand father takes out his pipe and lights it up. He then begins to quietly speak. He ask me questions about school, my studies in engineering. My dad picks up where he leaves off prying into my life as if he is looking for a thread on a suit. He ask if I have met anyone new. That is his polite way of trying to find out if I have a girlfriend or even a casual female friend that might develop into one. I just divert to another subject, just as I veer away from the subject of romance, a shooting star passes in the night sky. My grand father says that is sure some kind of sign of the good lord. I could give him a scientific explination but you don't argue with your elders. Some how,his words hit home with me. I am not sure what it is but something resonates deep inside of me. I dismiss it as a good meal and being tired from the trip, but there is that lingering doubt inside. What if it is something more?

It has been a week since I got back home. I have made the social rounds at all of the expected places. The VFW with my grandparents, the lodge with my dad, Sunday service and Wednesday night bible study. I went grocery shopping with my mother and said hello to my old boss at the local grocery store. He talked to me instantly and said he was glad to see me. He started here 30 years ago as a bag boy, then went off to war. He came back and used government benefits to go to college as well as playing sports. He asks how college has change since he got his business degree? I say not all that much. He says that if I want my old job back when I graduate, that he can find a place for me. I say thankyou politely and move on. As I begin to feel like I am fitting again, my dad has me going out to help my grandfather with his household chores. I am painting, doing repairs on the back porch, mending a rail fence in the back yard. My grandfather was a state employee for 33 years. He worked in the school system as a custodian then a maintenance man. My dad has an office job. He was in the military in peace time and was a clerk in the army. It got him a job at the local bank, then an insurance company. I guess my grand father wanted to see if I had learned anything new at school. The one thing about working outside and with your hands, it keeps you honest. My grand father says that a good sweat and some blisters make you appreciate what you have. He often speaks of Christ and the Apostles and the fact that most of them worked with their hands. Somehow that keeps coming back to me as I am working and sweating.

I spend a good bit of time with family and working around here and there. There really isn't much time for myself despite that fact I am on a 2 month summer break. I am not sure if it is just the fact that I will be finishing up soon in school and probably moving on or perhaps my parents are just afraid to let me go for fear I will disappear and never come back. I do steal moments away to myself. I took a walk down by an old pond near my folks place. I sit on a stump and look at the water. I really don't think about anything important, I just sit quietly and contemplate. On one of these quiet interludes, I am just listening to the wind and I hear a voice say gently be still. In a moment of what I think is profound revelation, I get slapped right acorss the back of the head. I jump up and turn around quickly. I have heard of God getting a fellows attention but ouch. I then look back into the sunlight streaming through the trees and there stands before me the object of my confusion and pain. Milly, the once knot kneed Stringbean that I tormented in middle school. She says you had a bee on you. I am dumb founded as she glistens in the sunlight. Her Honey colored hair is blowing gently in the breeze. She pokes me and asks did I hit you too hard or something. Suddenly I am conscience of how I must look. She just giggles and says I look like I have never seen a girl before. It is at this moment that I ask the same question I often ask in prayer, God are you there?

Some people say that love is something that you must work to achieve and others believe in love at first sight. I found my true love when I got slapped on the back of the head like a thunder bolt from the heavens. From the moment I gawked at her until I finally had to go back to school, I was left both dumb founded and with a sense of serene peace that I hadn't felt in years. It was as if God had finally answered me with a bit of a sense of humor. I promised her that I would write her often, but she just rolled her eyes and said that I would probably be too busy chasing around those college girls to even remember her. Her mom and dad did warm up to me for the first time ever. I find that in and of itself a miracle, given the fact that her mother used to chase me away with a switch. I made it back to school and during mid-term, my folks came up to check on me, they brought Milly with them. It was almost as if it were mapped out. I had felt kind of uneasy about coming back to finish my studies. When my parents arrived with the lady by whom I was smitten, literally, things seemed to ease and fall into place. I felt the return of my inner peace and making all top marks on my midterms didn't hurt either. As they left so I could focus on finishing my work, I felt a new sense of purpose. I was focused but confident, grateful and humble. I began to believe that God, that greatest of all engineers was actually there somewhere. With a blueprint and a slide rule, calculating out every detail so that things work out according to his divine plan.