Home to Maryland
My husband graduated from seminary in 1976 and by July 4 we were settling into life in California. Steve was to be working with a retired pastor who had begun a church in Oxnard. The poor man was so tired he welcomed help. It was soon obvious he saw this as a great opportunity to focus his life on his wife at the retirement home in Santa Barbara. Soon it was very apparent that Steve with his great seminary training and almost no experience would lead this church with only the long distance oversight of a session.
Oxnard was the place where we owned our first house and started our family. It was home and yet even in the best of times there was a certain loneliness being so far away from people and places that had shaped our history individually and together. And so after 5 years and the adoption of our 2 children it was time to move east. Much to our surprise we discovered that God had chosen to doubly bless our family and I said goodbye to California knowing I was 3 months pregnant. I flew with our 2 toddlers while Steve drove with a friend across country bringing all of our belongings.
I ached for the sight or sound of my good friend Jan who had driven the children and me to the airport. I had joked about wearing a sandwich sign that would say on both sides "Please be my friend" or perhaps "Friend needed. Applications taken here."
We moved into the little house across the field from my parents, the same house where my brother and his family had lived a number of years earlier. My mother was my landlady. She was probably the only landlady who would share her leftovers as well as provide free babysitting for her tenants.
Steve began a commute to Philadelphia where he had classes part of every week. My two toddlers were challenging and exhausting even with the willing assistance of my mother. Every night as my middle expanded I slept in the recliner. My sinus congestion increased. Everything about my life seemed to conspire to close me in. Even my birthday did little to diminish an increasing sense of claustrophobia.
One evening as I was walking across the field that separated my parents' house from ours, I wondered about the nature of claustrophobia. Many without it live in smaller spaces than than those who suffer from it. Was it really all those outside factors that hounded me or was my closed in space inside of me?
That night my usual pattern of sleeplessness continued as I went from bed to bathroom to recliner. The lines of a hymn by Margaret Clarkson that I hadn't thought of for years ran continually through my mind. "Lord of the universe, hope of the world. Lord of the infinite reaches of space , here on this planet you put on our flesh, vastness confined in the womb of a maid." How could anyone be more closed in then that, vastness confined in the womb of a maid? That's what Jesus chose to do for us. The eternal son, all of whom God is, chose to enclose himself in the womb of one of his creations
Sometime in the early morning hours when morning still wears the disguise of night, my thoughts came together on paper.
Lord of all spaces,
Create within me an open space.
Gently blow away the dark clouds of discontent
Which day by day have lowered the cathedral ceiling of my soul.
Push back the walls of circumstance
So instead of barriers
They are the expansive perimeters
Of my ever-growing dance of praise.
I wish I could say my claustrophobia and panic attacks never returned. I still struggled but now I knew where to look for hope. It wasn't in the right sinus medication, the end of the pregnancy or a bigger house. I knew God was the the only source of true hope.
Oxnard was the place where we owned our first house and started our family. It was home and yet even in the best of times there was a certain loneliness being so far away from people and places that had shaped our history individually and together. And so after 5 years and the adoption of our 2 children it was time to move east. Much to our surprise we discovered that God had chosen to doubly bless our family and I said goodbye to California knowing I was 3 months pregnant. I flew with our 2 toddlers while Steve drove with a friend across country bringing all of our belongings.
I ached for the sight or sound of my good friend Jan who had driven the children and me to the airport. I had joked about wearing a sandwich sign that would say on both sides "Please be my friend" or perhaps "Friend needed. Applications taken here."
We moved into the little house across the field from my parents, the same house where my brother and his family had lived a number of years earlier. My mother was my landlady. She was probably the only landlady who would share her leftovers as well as provide free babysitting for her tenants.
Steve began a commute to Philadelphia where he had classes part of every week. My two toddlers were challenging and exhausting even with the willing assistance of my mother. Every night as my middle expanded I slept in the recliner. My sinus congestion increased. Everything about my life seemed to conspire to close me in. Even my birthday did little to diminish an increasing sense of claustrophobia.
One evening as I was walking across the field that separated my parents' house from ours, I wondered about the nature of claustrophobia. Many without it live in smaller spaces than than those who suffer from it. Was it really all those outside factors that hounded me or was my closed in space inside of me?
That night my usual pattern of sleeplessness continued as I went from bed to bathroom to recliner. The lines of a hymn by Margaret Clarkson that I hadn't thought of for years ran continually through my mind. "Lord of the universe, hope of the world. Lord of the infinite reaches of space , here on this planet you put on our flesh, vastness confined in the womb of a maid." How could anyone be more closed in then that, vastness confined in the womb of a maid? That's what Jesus chose to do for us. The eternal son, all of whom God is, chose to enclose himself in the womb of one of his creations
Sometime in the early morning hours when morning still wears the disguise of night, my thoughts came together on paper.
Lord of all spaces,
Create within me an open space.
Gently blow away the dark clouds of discontent
Which day by day have lowered the cathedral ceiling of my soul.
Push back the walls of circumstance
So instead of barriers
They are the expansive perimeters
Of my ever-growing dance of praise.
I wish I could say my claustrophobia and panic attacks never returned. I still struggled but now I knew where to look for hope. It wasn't in the right sinus medication, the end of the pregnancy or a bigger house. I knew God was the the only source of true hope.
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