Friday, October 10, 2025

Dear God,

In my family there was always an expectation of conformity.  Men do this.  Women do that.  As long as we stayed in the box assigned to us, we were okay.  If not, there were consequences.

I didn't realize that growing up because I was so much in the box that I didn't know there was something outside it.  What I found in high school were friends whose boxes were different than mine.  I began to feel discombobulated.  While I was accepted at home for my box behavior, I didn't feel I quite fit with my growing-up friends.  

After moving to California in a time of real upset in the 1960's, I was totally lost.  Nothing was the same.  I was a senior in a high school four times the size of my hometown.  I had no friends and no prospects. I was lonely and afraid.  I jumped at the chance to get married to a man who loved me but was filled with pain and sorrow from an abusive childhood.  At some point we were destined to fail.  After three children we divorced.

It was during this period, O God, that my vulnerability led me into new places. I started college, a first in my family. I lived on the poverty line to support my children and to go to the university and seminary. I got breast cancer. And so on. I could have continued to conform but instead I paid greatly for decisions to shatter my box and to never allow creation of another one. 

I learned that you are not the god who challenges us to conform. You open us to new opportunities. While the president of our nation calls for our conformity to follow his evil policies and programs or else, we have to listen to another voice higher and greater than his in order to make space for healing, hope and a bright future not only for our nation but also for our world because they too are part of our human family. 

Help us hear 

your voice 

above all others, 

Merciful God.  

Make your voice 

louder than

all the rest.  

Lead us to 

high places 

where love 

has a chance, 

hope can 

rise up 

and healing 

can save us.  

Love, Andrea