Where I Buried Precious Treasure

It’s a happy grave since I could not stop it from dying

“When something in your life dies, you must either bury it or resurrect it. Because keeping it around will only result in a big stink.” T. D. Jakes

Each death plumbs a different depth of your grieving soul, doesn’t it?

You think the burden should at least feel a little lighter this time around. But last time was no dress rehearsal. The reality was gut-wrenching. And those pains did nothing to prepare you for your current waves of sorrow.

You only feel the agony of the old wound being mercilessly gouged open again.

Time should have sent its gentle breeze to be a soothing balm to your open sore. And fulfill its old proverbial promise to “heal all wounds”.

Instead, the searing pain carves an ever-widening hole in the place where your heart should be, as it weakly pulses its plunge into numbness.

Thankfully, different deaths don’t bring the same level of grief. Therefore, your grief-o-meter will register higher Richter numbers for the grandma who was a real friend to you across two generations, than for the once-a-year apple pie sweetheart that you put on a brave face for at Thanksgiving, and call “the other grandma”.

Similarly, you don’t feel the same way about the great job you were fired from, as you do for the death of a more personal relationship, like a live-in lover, a relative, or even a pet.

One of the mysteries of the human spirit is, How comes the same death causes more or less grief in one person’s life than it causes the next person?

Ever wondered about that?

One thing you know for certain, when things like a relationship die, you always find more happiness after you find a happy grave in which to lay that precious treasure to rest.

Greater Grief

Me? I’ve experienced 2 major “deaths” so far in my life.

And I am now confessing that I was more grief-stricken when the relationship with my former church was severed than I was when my marriage died in divorce court.

Not that I was closer to my church people than I was to my wife. Even though she suggested that one or two times in our quarrels. But she didn’t believe that. It was just good fodder for a marital argument.

Neither was the length of time spent in each relationship. Both relationships lasted about 20 years. But time was of no essence whatsoever.

Maybe I did not grieve my divorce as much because I instinctively knew that I would still have some relationship with my family. Our 2 sons, their future wives (just one so far), and our future grandchildren (2, at the time of this writing) would ensure we would always be connected. So I lost the marriage, but we were not disconnected.

Maybe I was a little naïve when it came to the church. I fully expected to stay at that church for all the time I would live in my city.

I really should have adjusted my expectations.

My involvement in church was total.

I started early.

I was born to Christian parents and grew up in church. My first Pastor was the brother of my mother’s mother. This great-uncle of mine was a good man, just a little too old-fashioned for us younger folks. Even though he tried hard to associate with this younger generation. He got all of us young people involved in church activities. We just had to be willing.

I started teaching Sunday School at 17, and have never been a member who just attended church and watched what’s going on. I sang in the choir, directed the choir, played in the band, was involved with Youth work, and also preached.

When I migrated to Florida, I was privileged to support the tenor line of the choir of my new church. I lead the Youth and Missionary departments, and preached on some Sundays, especially when the Pastor was out of town.

I moved from that church to help start this new church that became the center of my life for 20 years. I was the first person to receive a letter of recommendation from the current pastor, to help the man who was Youth President from my growing-up years move into his new role as founding Pastor of a new church plant.

In the days before the opening service, we spent exciting times purchasing equipment, and we managed to establish what was the best-looking church of our denomination in our region of the state.

Of course, we had our share of jealous conflicts and controversy. Our accreditation came into question and we ended up severing ties with the governing church organization. But we were undaunted.

In place of attending their national fellowships for youths, singles, and other ministries, we started our own and invited others to join us. We became a flagship church. For a while, we looked like the place where anybody who is anybody wanted to be.

As the organization grew, I found myself accepting less leadership and more supporting roles. And I watched myself being passed over, repeatedly, by this Pastor I had long admired. I rationalized away the rejection.

He didn’t publicly or outlandishly reject me. He just kept choosing someone else instead of me.

For example, he accepted my recommendation that we should begin a Bible Quiz program. After I designed the program and wrote the book on it, he appointed someone else to run the program.

For his part, the guy he appointed leaned heavily on me for help and support and (only) privately acknowledged that the program would never succeed without my input. He played Official Presenter while I played Executive Producer in the background.

Many years, he went on vacation at camp time, and I ran the competition in his place. I knew for certain I was a crucial component when the year that I could not attend camp, there was no Bible Quiz competition.

Still, I offered stellar support to every program and activity of the church where I had any expertise or experience. I found pleasure in doing so.

I also held on to the hope that another one of my plays would be accepted by Pastor and approved for production. But year after year, he diplomatically rejected my submissions. Only my friend Kirk’s plays were staged.

Finally, I gave my script to Kirk and asked him to produce it. I should have told Kirk that he should not let Pastor know that the script was not his.

Kirk called me one afternoon hours before a scheduled rehearsal and told me Pastor had changed the plans for the play. He said Pastor had asked him Who wrote this script? When he told him it was me, Pastor simply directed him, “I want you to do one of your scripts.”

I was privileged to act in some of Kirk’s plays. Also in many of those written and produced by the Drama Director after Kirk moved away. I discovered also that if that director had taken at face value the sentiments she heard Pastor express about me, she would not have cast me in any of those roles I became famous for.

There were so many areas of ministry where my efficiency was obvious. But I became a virtual unknown because I was out of favor with the guy in charge. I enjoyed success in serving not because of him, but despite his disfavor.

Pastor remarked to other pastors about how talented a speaker I was. Yet he only called on me to preach 3 times in those 20 years. None of the others he chose over me were better speakers than me. Most of them were not even half as good. But for reasons I cannot fathom, my Pastor did not like me.

Maybe he was intimidated by the fact that I might be a better preacher than he. That is a real possibility. Many others joined the church with the ability to preach, and he kept them sidelined as well.

Maybe I seemed to be a more likely prospect to succeed him than his son.

Not sure of the reason. But I know I wasn’t delusional. One of my friends once told me, “Pastor does not like you, stay out of his way.”

I Even “Went To Prison”

Still, my Sundays were a flurry of activity. I was active in Sunday School, Choir, Altar Work, and Prison Ministry. All four ministries. Week in and week out.

One Sunday night there was a tribute service in Pastor’s honor. Pastor is a great singer, so the service was filled with singing. Other singers were part of 1 or 2 groups. I sang in 4 [singing groups] that night.

I had worked on the Singles Committee, helping to plan conferences and activities, even when I was not single. I led the best choir of Seniors in the entire region, even though I had not yet qualified for my AARP card. Fortunately, I had never been arrested, but through this church, I regularly “went to prison”.

People always get that same look as you have on your face right now when they hear me say that instead of, “I went to the prison”. I always assure them, “Oh, don’t worry, the good thing is they always let me come back out the same day.”

I loved my church. It was the fulcrum of my existence. And I have the souvenirs to prove it.

I have in a box every piece of literature the church produced that I could lay my hands on. The weekly bulletins, even from the earliest days, yearly calendars, monthly magazines (some of which I helped to edit), special periodicals, and other papers- are all comatose in my souvenir box. I need to plan a time capsule release and show off those treasures.

The immense tension between the consistent rejection of my Pastor and my compulsive involvement in the work and ministry of the church forged in me a deep attachment to this church I was an integral part of, from its beginning. As my relationship with the Pastor got stretched, my relationship with God deepened.

Transition

That enhanced relationship with God is the only reason I could transition from that church to serve without bitterness in another congregation.

I had formed lifelong friendships at that church. To this day there are multiple contacts on my phone of even some Seniors who ask when will I return.

It was in February of that year that it occurred to me this was not the church I was going to heaven from. Which was a shock to me because when the church started, I believed that this would be my last station on the journey to heaven.

I tossed and turned through many sleepless nights of rumination. I sat through many reckoning days of consultation with trusted friends.

And I knew.

It became abundantly clear that I was plugged into a power source that had lost its power. The signs of life were being maintained by the “artificial respiration” of routine church attendance, pure-performance worship services, and mini sermonettes that no longer inspired or transformed the members.

It was not until September, 7 months of discomfort later, that I had the meeting with my Pastor, and told him that my season of service in this ministry had come to an end.

It was shocking news to him.

From comments I heard that he made, this move of mine was cataclysmic in the organization. I had been one of those founding members who looked like one of the fixtures that the place would never function well without. Nobody expected me of all persons to leave.

My leaving put his leadership in peril. Since I did not move because I was “moving out of town” like another prominent member. Things looked bad on him. He was losing too many good people.

I had to let all of that go.

I had to face the fact that I could, and definitely would be celebrated elsewhere. I did not have to settle for being merely tolerated anymore.

True, I would no longer be a member of one of the largest, and the leading congregations in the region. But the popularity and prestige we had enjoyed had begun to wane. Different pastors had advised that I would do more and better work in a smaller congregation than remaining lost in a large assembly that did not know its proper usefulness.

It was my allowing to die, this precious but now defunct relationship that was my ticket to new life in ministry.

New Season

Today, my various church and volunteer activities have not diminished, even during COVID. The only difference is that the pandemic has converted my prison and nursing homes visits, as well as church services to “virtual”.

There is no doubt that I would not now be further ordained, and given this much opportunity to speak and minister in so many more places, had I still been in that church.

As uncomfortable as growth and change always is*, one must embrace the new season of life.

*I’m suggesting that these two things are one and the same, hence the singular verb.

Moral Of The Story: Don’t mourn too long the death that marks the end of a season. Embrace your new season with enthusiasm. New life springs from the happy grave where your precious treasure rests in memory’s sweet repose.