GOD and My Major Appliances

I hear from GOD through the refrigerator.

Not really, but when I tell folks about this, I like to start off by saying that. It is marginally true.

Most of the time, GOD and I are in a very comfortable relationship. We have known each other a long time. I have talked, GOD has talked. We have been through a lot. GOD used to be there in my bedroom at night when I would hear my father break into an alcoholic rage and beat my mother. My sister, Julie, was not able to comfort me, but GOD stuck right in there. Most friends would run if they heard Daddy start up. I really appreciate someone who sticks around. We went to countless Sunday School and Training Union classes, even Wednesday night at church. No one will go to church with you on Wednesday night. I don't care how much they like you.

I really pitched a bitch, as we used to say, during my late teen years. By sixteen, I was drinking like I was my Daddy's daughter and smoking dope. By eighteen, I was having a lot of sex that didn't mean as much to me afterward as it seemed to promise right before. I blame the guys. ;) Hard as I tried to ignore GOD, I am humiliated to say, GOD was right there. Yipes. GOD is a sticker. GOD sticks.

By twenty, I had attempted suicide twice, been raped once, and had started to come around from the last wild years. I went to nursing school, graduated first in my class, left home and joined the Air Force. GOD went with me. I only own a couple of things from those years...a gossamer-thin gold cotton coverlet from India, a ring, some poetry, a few pictures. I left most of it behind, the rest was meaningless and got tossed. I tried my very best to ignore GOD. I stopped going to church, worked hard, played hard. I think GOD was wrapped in the fibers of that coverlet. Hidden among the scarlet and crimson paisley print, GOD could hug me as I hugged the coverlet. I was none the wiser.

Sometime after that, I met my husband, who was also in the Air Force. We married and grew up and had a child and GOD was welcome to hang out again. GOD and I went public. I talked about GOD. I prayed to GOD in front of people. I worked at Chapel on the Air Force base in Montgomery in Education. I told kids about GOD. It was the easiest job ever, talking to kids about GOD. All kids know GOD. They just do.

It was about this time that GOD and me and major appliances started being a thing. I was very open in communication with GOD, just like when I was little. Only now, the coversation expanded from pleas for help to how to help others. I was washing clothes when I received my first epiphany of the major appliances. It was pretty personal, so I won't divulge. Life went on. The second time was at the refrigerator. My husband had come home at lunch and just told me that he turned down a job at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio because he knew I didn't want to leave. He was right. I liked the area, loved working at Chapel and life was good. I turned to open the refrigerator and I just knew we should go. We did. Good move. We are still in the San Antonio area now.

Folks have asked me, after hearing about my Major Appliance revelations, what GOD sounds like. I still struggle to say. I definitely don't hear a booming voice like in the movies or a "still small voice" like in scripture. It's more the same way I hear my own self talking in my head as I am typing this tale. At MCP, Lexie once asked me how I know, if it sounds like when I am thinking myself, that it is not me, just saying what I want to hear.

Complex question. Simple answer. It sounds just the same as the voice in my head that said I would be ok while my daddy was beating my mother.

There are a lot of theories about the nature of GOD. I like to ponder them just as much as the next person. GOD is energy? GOD is in the bit of us people call the soul? GOD has an actual body and exists in some real place? Maybe GOD is magnetic waves and large appliances bring in the signal. Smirky grin here.

I don't know. I do know that when someone treats you well, even when all around you people are not treating you well and you are not treating yourself so lovely either, then you trust that. It's what I do.

My washing machine is seventeen years old. It has the knob broken off, so that you have to grab the leftover stub to turn it. Last night, it refused to spin. I had to bail out the water and put the dripping clothes in the tub. Then, I dropped the lid down with finality. ...and it started to spin. Several tries gives us the theory that the little switch that is pushed down when you close the lid is defective. If you smack it. It works. Whew! It is not only that I do not have the two hundred plus to replace it. That washing machine and I have history. We have been around the block and across the country together. It has seen my undies. And I was holding on to it when I heard a pretty startling thing from GOD. You just don't toss out something like that. I, as I said, appreciate someone who stays around. God talks...

...don't be afraid to ask.