What'll I do?

Hunky used to sing a little song to me on occasion and it has stuck in my head ever since: What'll I do when you are far away and I am blue? What'll I do?

I think I've asked this question an infinite number of times in the last forty or so days. I'm at the point now where I either have to start drowning in bitterness or start moving on, so this is my one and only blog talking about the pain of the situation and then it's time to move on. To begin with, being fired sucks. There are no two ways about it, and it puts a kind of financial and emotional stress on an individual and family that are unparalleled. And yet, I would venture to say that being fired is only a portion of the pain of being fired, and then completely excommunicated and then erased from a place where you have spent almost half your life investing. All of our closest friendships, all of our deepest loves, all of everything we have built and created and supported and used as support...gone. Not a hint of warning, not a chance of reconciliation, not a moment of understanding...gone. In one afternoon.

What'll I do?

Anyone who has known me long has known that I have been through some messes in my life; cancer, death, catastrophe. I am familiar with them all. But nothing, not one thing in my life holds a candle to kind of pain, the depth of betrayal and need for vengeance that have at times utterly overwhelmed me of late. I'm not saying these are right responses, but when nothing about the situation is pretty, you can be certain that many of my initial responses aren't going to be very pretty either.

What'll I do?

Try explaining to your children: no,  you can't go to co-op. No there are no friends you can call. No we can't visit them before we move 400 miles away. No, you didn't do anything wrong, but you will bear the brunt of some sort of punishment that isn't Godly or God honoring from people whom have always been lifted up to you as examples of Christian leaders. People who have greeted you with smiles and hugs and kind caring concern. But remember, you should trust your church family...how do you make a nine year old understand these things that even I can't begin to understand?

What'll I do?

How do I open up, become vulnerable, welcome friendships, embrace ministry, invest in lives and do all the things that are still part of my calling without always wondering just when the floor will drop out from under me again? Who do I trust and how far do I trust them? How will I know that the face they present to me is real, or will I always wonder how deep the dislike and deception are hiding just below the surface.

What'll I do?

How do I explain to my family of non-believers that this is who the church is and how they treat their own. How am I myself not a hypocrite when trying to explain away the hypocrisy of others. How is my life to be an example of how the Body of Christ makes the world better when it has beaten me down to this level? Ruined my name, maimed my character and then pretended I never existed as part of the church family.

What'll I do?

I know that this is a process, and that God is working it out in me and through me and around me. I DO know that. Some of these questions I have answers for and some I simply have to trust that God will provide them for me the moment I need it most and not a second earlier. Some of what I will do, I know already. Some of what God will do with me unfolds moment by moment. In the midst of all this pain there has been great excitement, burgeoning joy, a clean slate, and moments of pure heartfelt love. But while these things co-exist in my soul, the good does not erase the bad in this scenario, it simply plays a bittersweet counterpoint, one making the other sweeter, the other providing muting overtones that make it all bearable.
Time will make forgiveness possible, I hear, and already small tendrils of it are winding around the roots of bitterness and gently squeezing them out. I no longer know what next year, next week or even tomorrow may hold. I don't know what I'll do, but I know that God will make it possible each tiny step, or four hundred mile relocation leap at a time.