I was talking to God one day, yelling and screaming... prayerfully, at the top of my lungs, mad as Hades about all the things that seemed to be wrong with my life then. I was mad at my family, mad at a lot of people who called themselves my friend, mad at the church, the entire universe and especially mad at Him, for sure. And I did my best to let Him know just how angry I was.  As I finger-pointed, tears and snot and spit and a lot of choice words, that I guess the Bible says Christians should not use, were flying all over the room.  My eyes were red and popping, my throat hurt from too much mean growling, and I'd managed to give myself a headache in the midst of it all. While I performed, God never yelled back,... or argued with me. He didn't gasp and clutch His spiritual pearls, or even get offended when i told Him I hated Him and thought He was full of shit. He didn't censor me or disfellowship me or make me leave His thrown of mercy and grace.  He just quietly stood there and listened as I struggled with a host of long-term, deeply-rooted-in-my-soul issues that I'd allowed to get the better of me. He didn't even frown. 

When the time was right, He just smiled and patted me on my head... laughed a little and said "Kelly... you're gonna be alright." And He didn't say it like He was trying to convince me everything was going to be okay. He said it like He knew. Have you ever watched a child fall down and look at his mother to judge what his reaction should be? If the mother gets all worked up, the child screams. If the mother makes light of the situation, the child sucks up the jolt, gets up without wailing and keeps it moving. When my kids would fall and start to cry, I'd pick them up and dust them off and tell them "You're okay. See. Look." And they'd shake it off and be on their way. I was their gauge. God in His dealings with me was like that second mother.  His words rolled off His tongue with a light and calming assurance, and it caused me to catch my breath and give pause... finally.

I eventually collapsed on the floor and sobbed the rest of my pity party into the living room carpet. Every now and then I'd mumbling something like "You're mean and cruel," and "You've forsaken me, and it's all your fault," and "I still hate you." whimper, whimper, Aaauuuugggghhhhhhh!!!!

Needless to say, when I woke up the next morning, I was a little surprised that I was actually still here... Was this some kind of cruel punishment... to still be here? Was I going to be involved in some freak accident later that day... that week? What? Why wasn't I taken in the night for insubordination or the unpardonable sin... or... something? I lay in bed for a little while... waiting... for... a heart attack or stroke maybe. Nothing. "I'm not taking anything back," I finally said. "I meant everything." And I did.

That weekend I struggled with whether or not I should go to church. The devil on my shoulder said "Why go? Go to the beach instead. You'll be unhappy, yeah, but you'll have a great view." The Holy Spirit said,

"You really need to go to church today."

"Why?" I asked. "I really don't want to go." I tried to argue. I came up with a couple excuses and decided to go to the beach.

"You REALLY need to go to church today." The Still Small Voice repeated, only louder this time. I have to admit, I got a little scared, so I went.

I'd managed to get there just in time for the introduction of the speaker, a guest. Some nondescript, tiny-'fro-ed man from Philadelphia filled the podium and began to speak. "Your season versus your time." were the first words I actually remember hearing him say, and about ten minutes after that I was crying so hard the woman sitting in the pew in front of me turned around and gave me some tissue. "You're mad, and you think God is cruel and has forsaken you..." he continued, and I cried some more.

After he finished preaching, for the first time ever... in my life, I went up to the front for alter call. "I'm not going to fall. I'm not going to fall. I don't want to embarrass anyone, but... I'm sorry... I'm just not going to fall. I want the blessing, but I don't have to fall out to get it, do I?" The prayer-warriors and the body-catchers went down the line of people at the alter, drop'n 'em one by one. I dug my heels in and waited for the hand. I don't even remember what he was saying because I was so focused on not falling out. "He's not going to make me fall out."

"HE... doesn't make YOU... do anything," that same voice, connected to nothing warm and breathing and tangible whispered to me once again. "You do what you do because you believe."

"Oh!!" was all I'd managed in response before my knees buckled and I was on the floor. Down for the count. And they moved on to the next person.

On my way home from church, God and I had another conversation. "So, you're not mad at me?" I asked.

"Why would I be mad at you?"

"Why??... you know why." I said. He laughed.

"Why would I be mad at you for being you?"

"Well,... I cursed you... and... I... said some really mean things to you... and about you."

"Do you think I don't know you curse?" I laughed. "Do you think I don't know how you really feel, even when you don't say it out loud?" And then, just like now, I started to cry. "I LOVE the fact that you are honest about who you are and where you are. It's a lot easier for me to meet you there than to try and find some one and some place that you're making up and lying about." And then He wiped my tear away.

So,... fuck you... prayerfully, if you disapprove of who I am, what I do, what I say, where I go or how I think. Jesus didn't shun the harlot because she was a trick, or the thief because he stole, the adulterer, the homosexual, the liar... or the regular, run-of-the-mill sinner either, and if anyone can honestly claim that pompous self-righteous bullshit some Christians sling around so quick and easy, I think He can. 

Quoting Paul loosely, he said "by the grace of God, I am what I am." Saved, lost, good, bad, right or wrong, we all are who we are because God has allowed us to be so, and I appreciate that... being allowed the freedom to be who I am without self-righteous judgement from the only one who really matters anyway. 

You're offended because you choose to be. "You're aiight. Get up."

Gospel songwriter and not-the-greatest singer, Kirk Franklin has a new cd that came out a couple days ago, "Hello Fear". Curious about his title selection, I searched the internet until I found an article written on Gospelpundit.com, where Franklin talks about why he chose that name.  "I invite the listener to join me on the journey of letting this familiar 'friend' know that his time is over." While I get what he's trying to say about facing fear, I don't particularly care for his word choices,... "hello" and... "friend"? Just because you keep company with somebody... thing, that doesn't make them,... it your friend,... does it? I've been so very rude if it does.

And now this title has got me thinking about all the things I fear. Thankfully I'm a girl, so I'm allowed to be afraid of bugs and spiders and snakes and being home alone... sometimes, especially when it's dark outside,... and a little windy. But those are all manageable fears. I've actually touched bugs and spiders and snakes, some unwillingly and quite by accident, other times on purpose,... like... that time at the zoo or the other time when this guy at the park had his pet snake wrapped around his neck. I tried to warn him that that snake was just waiting for him to get too comfortable,... and then he was going to choke him until his eyes popped out of his head, but the guy said it was all harmless.  Right. Do you remember the story about the snake and the... frog... or was it an alligator, trying to cross a... river? Whatever the animals, there was the whole get-on-my-back-and-I'll-take-you-across-to-the-other-side thing, and the weaker animal was afraid the meaner animal was going to bite him and eat him. At the end of it all the one animal, as suspected, bites the other, and  while the victim animal lays there dying, he asks the alleged perpetrator of the dastardly deed, "Why did you bite me. You said you wouldn't?" to which the deceiver replied, 

"I'm still a snake"... or alligator... or whatever it was! 

And THAT was my point. It's still a snake... just like the pet snake that ate the baby in the middle of the night, or that "domesticated" gorilla who ripped off that poor lady's face or the "trained" show-slave tiger that got tired of Roy's evil whip and chair. Sometimes fear is just "Hello healthy caution!" And I'm a firm believer that a healthy caution will keep most people away from a lot of very dangerously uncomfortable and unforeseen things. Who knew there was actually a bullet in the chamber of that gun??? On some level you had to know there was the possibility of a bullet being there. Really. It's a gun.

I try very hard to avoid anything that might end with me sitting in a chair, at the bargaining table with death.

 "Hello Mr. Reaper. How ya do'n? Long time... never see,... (insert nervous laughter here)... at least not like this, eh? What can I do for you? Hope you're not coming for me now,... friend."

Yeah... no.

I did actually almost die once... maybe. I'm not so sure. If you really analyze it, I probably can't call it a near-death experience because my heart never stopped, my brain waves didn't flat line, at least I don't think they did, and I didn't stop breathing, but I lost consciousness and that has to count for something. It's like death was in the building, how unfortunately appropriate in a hospital, just not in my room. So we never got a chance to talk, and I never saw a bright light. Yay. But, ever since that... incident where I clearly remember myself slipping away, the doctors off in the distance calling my name and me too tired to reply, death has been more like this threatening bully, lurking in the shadows of my life... in a wheeze, a loose step, or chicken that wasn't cooked long enough, waiting to trip me up and steal... my breath. If I'm going to have any obscure, supernatural conversations, I'd rather have it with immortality instead. "You wanna show me the way to the fountain of youth, please?" 

And it's not just my death that I fear, it's all things and people death and dying and dead. When I was eight or nine, my grandfather, my mother's father, died. I didn't know much about him or his sickness, just that he... died. So we flew up to Rockford, Illinois for the funeral. Everyone around me was sad and sobbing and crying and carrying on. So, to fit in and follow suit, I worked myself up to a good cry as well, and then, when it my turn to view the body, I thought I'd go a step further,... and I'd kiss him... right on the cheek, in his casket, with his suit and tie on and his eyes closed. Everyone would be impressed with the eight-... or nine-year-old. So I did it. I kissed him, right on the cheek, in his casket, and I was never again the same. I sat in my chair and held my lip the entire service. My tears took on a new, real meaning. My grandfather was cold. No one told me he would be cold as ice or that his skin wouldn't feel like skin at all. Was that really him... really? Ahhh, I don't think me and death could ever be friends.

Tammy Robinson ended up dying young, in her twenties. And even though we weren't the best of friends growing up, and not friends at all as adults, I never really meant I wished she was dead after we fought on the school bus in seventh grade. I was just mad, that's all. She was someone I knew, and death doesn't really come after people I know. How rude for her to be gone *click* just like that. Too young. And then Mr. Simpson too, my ninth-grade homeroom teacher and my Physics teacher, killed in a car accident I'm told. He was a very unlikely candidate for death, I think. A young family man with a beautiful wife and two equally lovely daughters, young daughters, but death didn't care, it just comes and takes them all and leaves everyone else alive to try and sort it all out. 

My grandmother's friend, who we called Aunt Sarah because she and my grandmother looked so much alike their co-workers often got them confused in the office halls, lost her husband Sam to cancer. He died in the middle of the night in his hospital bed that had been set up in the living room because it didn't fit anywhere else in their apartment. Hospice is not where a dignified man rendezvous with his omega. He dies at home... where everyone in the house can be traumatized by the event. I'd rather go at home too. In an effort to help out anyway she could, while Mrs. Sarah bought a plane ticket to California for her and her husband's remains, my grandmother volunteered me to wash Uncle Sam's bed linens, I was okay until I saw all this dark stuff all over the sheets. Death vomit, and I screamed and did the get-it-off-me dance out the laundry room. It's okay for teenagers to be weirded out by stuff like that, so I got a pass. I thought the whole thing was a little sneaky and underhanded, but I was too young to protest at the time.

Aunt Jeanette, my grandmother's real sister who didn't look as much like my grandmother as Aunt Sarah did, moved to Florida to live out the final moments of her 92 years of life. For a couple months she didn't appear to be sick at all, just kinda off in her own space... unless she spotted something in the kitchen she wanted to eat, then she'd somehow manage to move from the couch to the kitchen and back with such speed and grace that no one noticed... except for the food smeared all over her hands and face. "Jeanette!!!" my grandmother'd yell at her like she was three. "Did you just dig your claws into my pie?" Aunt Jeanette, decked out in blueberry-face, would deny it all. She'd also come out and join the rest of us in the house when one of the big-bellied twins would toddle by, sticking out her hand and snapping her fingers.

"Come're baby. Come're..." then she'd smooch, smooch, smooch like they were puppies who needed to be petted. Aunt Jeanette, unlike Uncle Sam, was moved to Hospice where, as it turned out, it's a very dignified place for proper ladies to go and wait while everyone around them watches death slowly stake it's claim on what was left of her life. At the very end she couldn't walk or talk, and she could only eat chocolate ice cream. I sang to her, hymns for the good church lady. The other residents moaned along. "Why???!!! Oh God!! Why are you doing this to me??!" And I couldn't help but wonder the exact same thing. Aunt Jeanette clawed at my arm once while I sang, and I wished I could've helped her, but I didn't understand.

"Please tell your sister it's okay for her to go now." That's what the doctors told my grandmother to tell her. She'd... died... twice, and then came back like she was worried about leaving... maybe even scared. No one ever thought about scared. Neither did I until just now. Goodbye fear. My grandmother got the call in the middle of the night, and she was gone.

My dog had her second litter of puppies outside in the cold, in January, in Maryland. We figured the first two to come out must've been outside for about an hour before we knew what was going on. "I don't want it! I can't hold it! Here! Take it! Take it! I screamed as I choked back tears, not wanting to hold the seemingly lifeless puppies while Richard started barking out orders.

"Put a towel in the dryer!" He shouted at me. I could do that. That wasn't nearly as scary as holding a dead puppy. So I grabbed some towels and threw them in the dryer while he and one of the twins each took a little black ice cube and started gently rubbing it between the palms of their hands. I ran back with hot towels then stood on the fringes of all the activity, waiting for my next order. More towels. The puppies eventually started chirping for their mother's milk, and I saved the rest of my tears for another day. In another litter, the first puppy to ever die came into this world with his ticket to the next life noticeably tacked to his chest, too weak and too tiny to do anything but lay there and die. I grabbed the heating pad and a bottle and kept him in my bed, close to me, to make sure he was warm and protected... as much as I could not protect him from death, I tried. I stared at his lifeless body long after he was gone, wondering what I could've done different, knowing he could've lived if I'd tried... something... harder. His mouth was agape, like he was trying to say something, but it was too soft, and I never heard. We put him in a plastic bag and sent him on his way with Monday's trash. Now I've learned not to interfere.

As death goes, I've been lucky. Still...

"Hello death. Haven't seen you in awhile. Here's your seat. Looks like you'll be staying a day or two. Make yourself comfortable. I wish I never knew you."