Friday was May 24th. It’s a significant day and one that was filled with sadness for me this year. But God gave me hope on Friday, through Granny and the story of the man by the pool of Bethesda.

But God. Those two words mean so much to me in my “not but, I meant and” world. Anyway on Friday, Leah showed up to help us get things from the storage unit to the house. She’s a powerhouse guys. I remember when I was able to move mostly on my own, and thought I was a powerhouse. She’s a powerhouse with a loving heart who is doing the work to get to peace. We’re on that journey together even when we’re not walking side by side.

I wasn’t sure what I’d be able to do on Friday, because on Thursday I was in so much physical pain, and so physically weak because of emotional pain. On Thursday I barely made it in the door to take care of a thing that was quite important.

In fact I shouldn’t have made it in the door, but I always ask, and now I can stand ready to hear and accept no. I asked and waited, and was invited in, and I was grateful.

I did a few things with supernatural strength, and then went home to bed.

On Friday as I was heading back home, God started talking with me about that Bethesda man and God’s love.

Leah showed up, listened to what was important to me, loaded her vehicle, and mine, and then left to drop off the things that she carried, while I more slowly put things back, and felt everything that I was feeling physically and emotionally.

When I got back down with the expectation that I would be helping her to put things in the vehicle, I found it loaded and waiting for me. She’d gone ahead. I felt a bit stressed, as if I had let her down somehow, and I almost let that stressful thought take control. I really needed to urinate, and I was some kilometers along on the highway home before I came back to my senses, and remembered to live as myself, and to communicate towards that end.

Old programming popped in, but my new gentle relationship with God stepped in to remind me that I am not a paralyzed people-pleaser. I am myself, and I needed to live as me.

So I got off the highway, and thankfully I was very close to one of my favourite on the road washrooms. It is always fabulously clean. I sent Leah a message, and carried on.

God had started talking with me about that Bethesda man, and reminded me of Granny’s lifelong legacy of walking as herself. She was a powerhouse too. And so am I. I walk on my knees if I need to. I forgot for a minute.

Jesus went to look for that man because for years he had been trying his best with no healing.

In almost forty years no one had helped him to the water.

Jesus came to tell him to take up his bed and walk. God was and would be with him. He didn’t know, and what we don’t know has a huge impact on our lives.

On Friday, I think God showed me that we assume that this man got up and ran. I heard Granny then asking Daddy; “Len, dem people say that I must walk faster than I can walk?”

I think that maybe he got up and walked as he could with the knowing that God was with him.

It’s so super rare to find someone who can walk with us at our pace, or maybe it’s rare to see that there are people who can walk with us at our pace, because we are so stressed by the idea that we have to walk at a certain pace to match the people who show up. And people are stressed by the idea that we should be able to stay apace with them.

So maybe as he walked the people around him showed up as themselves doing their best to walk with him.

They might have forgotten him because he was out of sight for so many years, or they got so caught up in their own lives, and they assumed that someone else would show up.

So many possible variables of the story showed up for me. In all of them the comfort was that God was there the whole time.

It made me more compassionate towards all of us when we show up, when we don’t show up, and then opened light on all the possible various thoughts and judgments running through our minds that affect our interactions whether we show up or not.

I think God showed me that just like the butterfly which someone thought it was good to help out of its cocoon, God stays with us while we walk at our best here. And when it’s needed and as often as it is needed God will wrinkle time for us, or move us supernaturally or create paths supernaturally. Sometimes people die forgotten and misunderstood. And God was with them.

Remembering the village, and asking God to help me see and appreciate the village that shows up as they can, when they can, while grieving the pain of the unfulfilled dream of conscious unity and compassion in peace has been God’s gift to me.

I really needed that gift.