Thanks for walking with me,” Michele said.
It was four days later, late morning on Thursday. Michele had called in to the school, but they didn’t need her today. But she wasn’t discouraged. She’d had a wonderful quiet time going over a chapter in the children’s ministry notebook Julie had given her last Sunday. She’d been reading it every morning for the last few days and was getting a lot out of it.
“You know me,” Jean said, “always looking for an excuse to get out of the house.” They walked through a shaded park about midway between Elderberry Lane and Michele’s townhome. Jean pushed little Abby in a stroller; the baby was sound asleep.
“Is my mom watching Tommy and Carly?”
“No, they’re actually in this little preschool I found. Just till noon. They go three times a week.”
Michele continued down the sidewalk. “Well, the reason I wanted to see you is this notebook, the one I talked to you about on the phone. In a way, it’s rocking my world.” Michele wished she had it with her so she could read some of the things she’d underlined that morning.
“Really? A children’s ministry book?” Jean said. They reached a corner in the sidewalk and turned to the right.
“Let’s see if I can explain it. This whole curriculum is based on four basic commands. The idea is that there are four main beliefs every Christian should know and own, and these beliefs flow out of four commands. Two of the four are about love. Love God, love others.”
“Like what Jesus called the two greatest commandments,” Jean said.
“Exactly. I’ve read those verses and heard teachings on them lots of times. I don’t know if I’m just in a different place now or if the stuff in this notebook is just saying everything in a different way. But it feels like I’m reading something brand-new. I wanted to run it by you and see what you thought.”
Just up ahead, the trees ended and so did the shade. “Do you mind if we turn around before we reach there?” Jean said, pointing with her eyes. “I don’t have any sunblock for Abby.”
“Not at all. It’s starting to get pretty hot out here anyway.”
“So what about the stuff sounds new?”
“For starters, I always thought loving God and loving others were just things I was supposed to do, commands I was supposed to obey. Not that I obey them all the time, but I’m supposed to. It’s my job, as a Christian, I mean.”
“And this notebook says . . . that’s not true?”
“Not exactly. But it says I need God’s help to love him and love others the right way. On our own, we don’t have the power to pull it off. Including something as basic as loving him and others. That’s what humility is all about. Being honest about our weakness and being willing to ask for God’s help. Humility makes it possible for us to receive God’s grace, and it’s that grace that gives us the ability to love the way we’re supposed to.”
They walked a few steps. Jean didn’t respond. Then she finally did. “Wow.”
“I know,” Michele said. “Doesn’t that change things for you? It did for me. It made me think about why I’m not such a loving person.”
“Don’t say that,” Jean said. “You are too.”
“No, I’m really not. Not lately anyway. I know I’m supposed to love. And sometimes I try to be loving. But if I’m being honest, it’s a lot of work. And I think, for the most part, I’m mostly focused on myself. Like this whole getting pregnant thing. I’ve been obsessing about this for months. Really, almost a year.”
“I wouldn’t say obsessing.”
Michele stopped walking and looked at her sister-in-law and friend. “Jean . . .”
“Okay, maybe you were obsessing.”
“Were obsessing?”
“You’re not obsessing now,” Jean said.
They started walking again. “Okay,” Michele said. “Maybe not now but every single day—sometimes every hour of every single day—until this morning. And I’ve been totally stressed out by it. Which is another new thing the notebook talks about. New to me, anyway.”
“It talks about stress? In a children’s ministry book?”
“In the part to the parents it does. It connects loving God with living completely free of stress.”
They reached the same corner of the sidewalk as before, but this time they turned left. Jean shook her head. “Don’t think I’ve heard that before. Go on.”
“The idea is, when we’re loving God wholeheartedly—which grace helps us to do—we’re finally putting him in the highest place in our hearts. He becomes the object of supreme value. And we start looking to him to meet our deepest needs instead of to other people and other things. And he does. He’s the only one who can. Our tendency is to expect things from his creation that only he can give us. When I read that, Jean, I just froze. I think I do that with Allan all the time. I think I’m doing that with this pregnancy dilemma. I’ve gotten to the place where I can’t see myself ever being happy, not until I have a baby. And since that’s not happening, and we have no idea when it will, I’m doomed to be constantly miserable. Miserable and stressed out.” She was feeling stress just repeating all this.
They came up to a bench situated midway through the park along the sidewalk. Michele sat.
“I think I do the same thing,” Jean said. “At least I used to. I still do sometimes, but I think I’m getting a little better at trusting God since our world fell apart last year. That was our overwhelming situation, kind of like you’re having now with this baby thing.”
Michele was trying hard to remember something she wanted to say. “There was something else I read that got to me. I underlined it twice. What was it? It was something about what causes stress. It was really simple . . .” Then it popped into her head. “I know—the author said stress is the gap between what we expect from God’s creations and what we’re actually receiving. Since only God can meet our deepest needs, the more we look to people and things to satisfy us, the more gaps we’ll have and the more our frustration will increase. Doesn’t that seem true to you?”
“It makes total sense to me,” Jean said.
“That’s how loving God with all our hearts reduces stress. The more we look to him as the only one who can make a difference, the less we look to things that can’t truly help us. The stress goes away because the gaps get closed. God fills our hearts with more love and joy and peace while we wait for our circumstances to get better. With our stress and anger no longer controlling us, we get freed up to care about others instead of always thinking about ourselves.”
Jean just looked at her a few moments.
“What?” Michele said. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking . . . that’s pretty profound, what you just said. I’m thinking I want to read that notebook.”
“So this kind of seems new to you too?”
“Kind of,” Jean said. “Not like it’s some weird new doctrine. I just never heard it put that way before. It’s so simple.”
Michele’s phone rang, startling them both. Even little Abby began to stir. Michele looked at the screen. “Hmm, that’s different.”
“Who is it?”
“It’s Christina. She just texted me. She wants to know if we can meet this afternoon. She says she wants to talk about something pretty important.”