Point of View: Reconnecting

I had given one of my best sermons ever, though the phone, I discovered, had gone dead.

Well, I had heard it anyway, and what a stirring sermon it was, all about persistence and grit and the fruits thereof. Before I’d ascended my pulpit, she’d said she had reconnected with God, which I thought was good, for recently she’d said she no longer talked to Him, which had struck me as — especially in her case — sad. 

She said she was also connecting now with people too. To know that she was reconnecting spiritually — however that connection may be characterized — and socially may have boosted my spirits as much as hers were depressed when, a week ago, and physically compromised as well, she’d checked herself into the hospital.

It is good every now and then to readjust the carburetor, as it were — which is what I think she was trying to do here — trying to achieve a more perfect mixture.

Was she happy to go home? Yes. 

Did she think it was a good thing she had done, a good decision that she had made? Oh, yes, it had been a good thing.

I said she sounded 100 percent better. She said she felt much better, though it had been, she said, a rough few days.

She was unsure about driving a car. One step at a time, I said. 

The goal was to be happy, was it not, to feel physically and mentally and spiritually in tune insofar as that was possible. 

(It’s a deeper goal, I think, than is often assumed.)

One step I hope she’ll take once she gets home — requiring some courage on her part — will be the one over the threshold and into the air . . . into life.