little mysteries

Today, after church, I stopped at the gas station, bought gas on my debit card... but even as I was driving onto the street, I thought, "where is my card?"

I can't find it. I've already called to say it was lost. What happened to it? Did it drop on the ground? Is it under the floor mat of my car, someplace I have already checked? I took everything out of my billfold, dumped my purse, looked through my checkbook. Gone.

And yet somehow I knew it was gone within minutes of using it. How did I know? My brain was already on to the next thing I was going to do. Why did this little red light blink on in my head? What caused me to look in my purse, to double back to the station? Whatever made me check to see that I had it, I am thankful for.

Today the sermon was about angels... the scripture text was the one from Hebrews, where we have been told we have entertained angels without even knowing it. The minister talked about the different kinds of angels who visited... the angel who spoke to Mary, the three that visited Abraham and Sarah. She talked about a friend of hers who felt the presence of an angel in a hospice room. She mentioned Mother Teresa. But I sat there thinking of Katie's angel.

Katie was eighteen and waiting for the bus. She had placed herself in a position where she had lost her license and most of her bravado. She was unclear about nearly everything at that time. Lost, I thought, in so many ways, but growing in spite of herself. I was feeling hopeful for her, even as she was experiencing some very difficult times.

She had gotten herself a job as an instructional assistant in a special ed. classroom. The school was about 6 miles from the apartment where she was living. Nearly every morning I would swing by and pick her up, then drop her at her school. Her apartment and the school were on the way to my job, so little-to-no inconvenience to me. Plus, it gave me the opportunity to check in with her daily, and I liked that. After school, she caught the bus, either back to her apartment, or to the nearby community college where she was taking one of many remedial math classes.

One afternoon while sitting at the bus stop a man walked up to her and took a seat. She described him to me later as an old drunken Indian. As they sat there in silence, he suddenly began to speak. He told her she was going to be just fine... that her life would come around... that she didn't need to worry. And then he just got up and left. Her bus arrived and she headed to GCC for class.

She told me he was an angel. She said she knew it when he began to speak. She had to repeat math class after math class. She learned how to persevere, how to succeed even in the face of failure. She graduated due to pure grit and determination... But she never forgot the promise of that man, that angel.

Shortly after this happened I told my spiritual director about it. She told me that if my daughter said he was an angel, then he was.

In Matthew Jesus tells us that we need to find him, see him, in the weak, the suffering, the ugly. We are so accustomed to expecting things to be a certain way. Jesus should always be beautiful, angels should only wear white, and little niggly thoughts that we have lost something should only come to us in reasonable ways.

I am reminded that spiritual work is always about entering the mystery.
Thank heaven for the little mysteries I encounter every day. They are reminders to me that I need to live in open hearted wonder and continual expectation of miracles.