“Hi beautiful!”
“I love it when you call me that Da Da.”
“Are you ready to go for a ride?”
“I love rides Da Da – where are we going?”
“To church”
It went something like that. 🙂
We visited Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church in Smithfield yesterday afternoon on a glorious fall day in Southern Virginia. We decided to take a short day trip becuase the weather was so nice and I was compelled to visit this old church.
I had been to this historic landmark before, in June of 2006, the year we lost our pregnancy and the year I hit bottom.
I had spent almost a week away by myself at a retreat center just down the road on the banks of the James River “trying to figure it out”. I was a little bit of a mess that summer. So much came crashing down in my life I decided it would be best to purposely dismantle the rest on my own.
It was a difficult time coming to terms with the loss of our baby, the effects of growing up in an alcoholic home, and the mess I had made in my own life because of it. As gut wrenching as it was to realize my role in all of the pain in my life and others around me, it was also a wonderful time with just me and my God. I let Him know what I thought about things and He let me know He was there. Stopping by this old church on the way back home from my retreat seemed the perfect place to transition back into reality. I wasn’t sure how I ended up there, but had the unmistakable sense that God was in it.
I guess that is the role of the church – to be a doorway to and from reality.
A place where heaven and earth mix, a place where truth and lies are set before you as clear as black and white.
A place where what is real and what might have been collide, sometimes with spectacular results. A place where you learn to trust that even though life is hard, you may screw things up with the ones you love, some things hold true.
God is the God of second chances, and God is always good.