Flowing in the Living Water

I am The Living Water
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Holy Trinity Lansdale

It has been 17 years or so since I returned to church. I still have my doubts, but I cannot not doubt that the journey has transformed me.

Mosaic Woman has journeyed with me day by day and has unfolded along with me. We are blessed to have become people who still desire to share lives together.

This past year I reconnected with some friends I knew back in college. One came to town on business and I fed him pizza. One I actually picked up a phone and called. One I met halfway, by a river we both love from those days in college.

I pondered the chances of people disconnected for nearly three decades to have become new people who still would want to be friends with each other. In each case, I am glad to call them my friend. 

Watching the river that day with my friend, I was baffled; the river seemed to be flowing in opposite directions. Finally I asked if she saw what I saw. Rivers are turbulent. In fact trying to get any water to flow without any turbulence is quite difficult.

17 years ago I was afraid to leap into the living water. Where would it take me? I imagined places that I feared. Could I become shaped by God into a person I didn't want to be? A wise man told me that I did not have to believe anything, just be willing to take a journey.

The turbulence has transformed me, but so far not into what I feared. Who knew God wanted me to garden, to listen to jazz, to transform my doodles into glass sun catchers, to decide that creating joy is the ultimate goal of my teaching, to invite 50+ people a year to my house for pizza, to learn how to imagine the pain of others so I can open this stoic heart a bit more day by day, to become an Episcopalian, to find a place to finally release my pain and return year after year for eight days of silence with Jesuits ...

The journey has pushed me into so many places That I have to wonder who this new self is. Then I visit with three of my best friends from back in the day, and I can now see that I am flowing in the living water and I am pleased to have inched myself in a bit deeper each year.