Broken (pt 2)

Every year, we have a special communion service in the week before Christmas, where families sign up for a time to have communion with one of our pastors. It is a personal time, and a significant time for everyone involved. My parents signed up before they found out they were going to Texas, so I appeared “as their proxy”.

It hurt. Granted, I am tired and depressed, and generally more heart on the sleeve this time of year. But it hurt that I was going to communion alone. I had asked about for a date, but everyone was too busy with something else.

When I got to church, I mingled while waiting to enter the sanctuary. Its nice to have friends. *smiles* But, once inside, I sat by myself in the back row, waiting my turn, and crying into my crossed arms on the back of the pew in front of me.

I was tired. I was alone. I was hurting.

Not that I am complaining. I am alone, and that hurts. But it is life. It is the price I pay for..whatever. At any rate, I wasn’t blaming anyone, or asking that it be changed. I wasn’t even wanting the pain to stop.

All I really wanted was to get moving, move through it and get out of there. Get away from people, and go home.

All I really wanted was a tender shoulder to have a good cry on. But I was alone.

After almost half an hour, I managed to get a high-pass-cycle running that kept my emotions in check well enough that I approached the front of the church.

PRay spotted me first and flagged me over. We sat on the platform steps, reclined actually, and he told me about a conversation he had with our senior pastor. About our trip to Seattle and the post-modern church. We talked about how this particular evening was typical of a post-modernistic activity: it was about making contact, making meaning. It was a reinvention, a reapplication of the first-century church.

We talked, and shared truth, and a vision for what could be, what should be. But I found it ironic that as we discussed the necessity, the imperitive of post-modern church meeting the needs of its members and not being just a “program”…that he didn’t ask about my apparant sadness.

*chuckle*

Or, maybe he sensed it, sensed the truth about it, and understood that I didn’t want change, but only to get through it, so he kept the discussion intellectiual. And in that way, I stayed sane.

In this way, together we broke a small loaf of bread, in the manner of the original disciples after Jesus’ ascension, and we took a cup, and we ate and drank together, in recognition, in rememberance, of Jesus’ sacrifice on all our behalf. And of our part in that.

So now I come here. I play out my entry on the keyboard while listening to Tori Amos loop in QuickTime. I’m still alone, despite friends in IM. I still hurt. I have no shoulder to cry on. But thats okay. Tomorrow will be another day. But Jesus is for always. And the reason I have another day.