Where is god?

🛑 Adult content, language, drugs, abuse (multiple forms), please read with discretion. May be a trigger for some readers. Reader discretion advised. 

This story has massive amounts of adult content. So much out of my wheel house, here’s to something different.

Where is god?

Jonah 

Most everyone is familiar with the story of Jonah. The Old Testament profit that was swallowed by a fish. God tasked Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach. Jonah didn’t want to. He ran from God. In the opposite direction. 

I’ve read teachings that state ‘well if Jonah would have just done what God would have told him in the first place’. There is something missing. Why? I have a copy of a King James Bible that has notes before each chapter. It says Jonah was a soldier. Now that makes more sense. Jonah was a soldier who had been fighting against people like the people of Nineveh probably his whole life. Now God wants him to switch gears and preach to these same people. 

Yes, I understand why Jonah ran. God had a powerful lesson to teach Jonah. Sometimes we have to make a complete 180 to be where God wants us to be. 

Where is god?

Since ever

Maggie woke me. I had fallen asleep in the hammock. As she sat down in her rocker she asked, “what’s wrong?”

Where to start? Finally I blurted out, “I don’t know how to use a microwave.”

She smiled, “you don’t know this. Growin’ up, we didn’t have runnin’ water. We had to draw water from a well. In the winter; it would get so cold in our house, water would freeze. I know about that part of hard livin’.” Chico jumped in her lap as she rocked away.  “I’ll teach you how to do laundry and such. You can eat as many meals as you’d like with me and Chico. How was the bed?” She must have read the expression on my face. “Too hard, too soft?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Have you never slept in a bed?” She smiled a sweet smile. “I’ll make you a deal. Sleep in the bed for 5 nights. If you don’t like it, we’ll take this hammock down and put it over there.”

Our conversation was interrupted by a cop car. It was the lady cop that had kicked the bottom of my shoe. “I drove up to your house.  When I saw you sitting here, I thought I’d stop. Maggie just stared at her. “Your folks ever come home?”

“No.” 

“Is that normal?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if mom didn’t run away with a trucker. Done that before. Was gone ‘bout a year.”

“And your dad?”

“Longest he’s been gone,” I thought for a minute. “6 months. Found him one time in a cave across the mountain.” She nodded. “Why are you interested this time? I never saw the law come ‘round other times they were gone?”

“Ladies at the nail salon are worried.”

“Try a new one. She’s never been inside a nail salon. Dad would have beat the shit out of her for wasting the money. Maybe the ladies” (if you could call them that) “at that skank ass gas station across town.” 

“Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“Home schooled.”

“Since covid?”

“Since ever.”

The deputy smiled and tipped her hat. Once she was gone, I looked over at Maggie. “You don’t like her?”

“I don’t like cops. They’re never around when you need them and they harass you when you don’t. I do have a favor to ask. Could you reframe from cussin’? While I do agree with what you just said. I would like to suggest finding different words to express yourself.”

I sat there thinking about what she had just said. She had never cussed around me. Or lost her temper. “What would you have said?”

“I’m a huge smart-ellic. I might have said something like, that delightful gas station across town with the stellar reputation.”

I smiled at that. ‘Stellar reputation.’