Lost and Found

The other week, I lost my key to my office. I spent an hour looking for it and called my sister in my distressed state. Sometimes you just need someone else to do the thinking for you. She said exactly what I knew, go to your office. It might just be locked inside. You, too, know that panicked feeling of looking for something you desperately need and not being able to locate it.

The book of Luke in the Christian Gospels tells the short tale of a woman who had ten coins and lost one (Luke 15: 8-10). As with my key, she looked all over until she found it. When I read that story, I feel the urgency of emotion when I think of her looking under every nook and cranny of her house, turning on every light, craning around furniture to see what strange place may have inadvertently welcomed that treasure of hers.

It's been a week and a half now since I felt a similar angst though with a quite different situation. I was having surgery and in the days approaching I recalled how people used to have to mark themselves in pre-op in order to ensure the correct location for operation. For whatever reason, I was dreading that act. Maybe the dread was rooted in not wanting to admit that something was wrong with me. Maybe it was born of my perfectionistic fears: what if I do it wrong? There are likely all manner of explanations. I only know that it was a small task that became a non-sequitur the minute the surgeon entered the room.

It had begun raining outside and she had run in from the unexpected shift in the weather. Breathless, she whipped out her purple marker, leaned over me, and signed my chest with her initials. She was off and running again but she left me with two things: my first ever tattoo (albeit temporary) and a sliver of peace.

II had internally been struggling to find my peace--not that anyone around me was aware of that. I had tried to self soothe in the waiting room by tapping my arms but that appeared to be distracting to other people. Once in the pre-op room, I watched everyone around me talk to each other but no one spoke directly to me unless they had to do so--at least not about anything meaningful. It felt as if an elephant were in the room. I wished for someone to ask me how I was feeling about what was about to happen. I longed for someone to pray over me as I had so often during my ministerial career. I never realized what that prayer could mean to someone until I found myself in this situation without it. People texted their own versions of prayers in the form of well wishes but what I desperately needed were THE words of prayer. Mind you, I did not tell anyone what I needed. How were they to know? They were doing what people do. My friend calls it deflection. It is that desire to not make someone uncomfortable especially in their weak places. Therefore, we avoid addressing anything of great importance. I, too, didn't want to make anyone else uncomfortable. I realize daily that my lens on life is far more intense than that of most people so I am gifted at inviting the uncomfortable even when it is not welcome. I think I was also protecting my psyche and my heart by closing down. We do this, you know. We all do it in our own ways--some more visibly and staunchly than others--but we all do it.

Somehow, the surgeon's initials just seemed like that prayer that I needed. She had marked me . . . like the woman had marked the coin . . . like I had essentially marked my keys. Those initials felt as if I was now in her charge. With all of the varied nurses and doctors entering and exiting that room, she claimed me. For the time being, I belonged to her. She would take care of me. I was safe. All would somehow be well. Michael Singer in his book, The Untethered Soul says "spiritual growth is about the point at which you start to feel your energy change" (p.62). I felt that happening with that mark. The wall around my heart was crumbling just a bit.

I've long been interested in the reasons people get tattoos. For some it is an opportunity to hold to the memory of a loved one. For others it is a survival mechanism--a place they can depend on looking for something meaningful that sustains them. There is permanency in them. There was no permanency in those initials for me but the comfort I found in being marked remains with me today. (The other mark she left is another story! That "tattoo" is way too permanent!)

God marks us in the same way. In the places of our greatest fears--however founded or unfounded they may seem, God has claimed us. We are his charges. We will be protected if we just let go of our own control and let God's care happen. My desperate search for my keys was about seeking for control. When I let go of the angst and followed the reasonable way, the keys appeared.

I will remember the "tattoo" of my surgical day as an invitation to let God mark me . . . as an opportunity to seek after the "oneing" (as Julian of Norwich called it) that grounds us in the truths of who we were created to be. With each memory of it, I hope that I recall that I have been marked by God who longs for union with me and who values me like the woman valued her lost coin. Therein will I find my safety and my freedom to be the joy God created me to be. May we each find our essence in embracing God's mark on our lives. Amen.