A buck forty, hydroplanin'

So today was kind of the end of this conference. The people who came to lead it are leaving today, but they led the morning church services. The singing and worship was really good, and I even went up to the front with my baby daughter, which is what all the really "into it" people do, though they are usually waving flags and dancing and jumping around and annoying me. Still, I felt pretty self-conscious and like I was succumbing to emotion by going up there. We sang all these songs with the lyrics "holy, holy" in them, which is what our pastor feels like is the angels way of singing. When the service should have been done, he (the pastor) went up and suggested indirectly that there were lots of angels around with us and asking if we wanted to keep worshiping.

I went and got my older daughter from Sunday school, afraid I was going to miss something exciting, as I had felt when I went to that dinner party instead of the conference the night before. When we came back into the sanctuary, we went up to the front to be with Leticia and her kids and let our children wave flags and enjoy the music. By this point the team of people who had come to lead the conference came to the front and began to share the "words" they had for us. There were things about the church, about single mothers, about people with Down syndrome, you get the drift.

Now we had met the two interns who had come with the main pastor leading the conference and his wife, because they (the interns) were staying at our friends' house where our daughters were sleeping. They were nice and seemed quite intelligent and interesting.

So at this point in the service, amid all the general words, one of the interns said, "Ray and Marie, please stand up." Nobody else had been called by name like that. Ray was in the back of the room, but he came up and joined me. I don't really remember what all was said, but I felt like I was going to laugh and cry and was very trembly and nervous, which all seems to be part of the production.

The guy then said something about how our family had been chosen like the people of Israel and God's loincloth. I didn't get it, but being compared to the people of Israel is scary and intimidating and not entirely nice. He also said something about "a people, a name, a praise, a glory." After it was all over, Ray wanted to go up and have the guy pray for us. I told him right off the bat that I didn't really believe in God anymore, but he didn't seem too judgmental or surprised. However, when he prayed, he didn't really say anything. And usually, these people go on and on when they pray, with all this wordy, annoying eloquent stuff. It was kind of awkward, but not too bad. All in all, I left church feeling extremely special and loved, chosen by God to do something special.

Since coming home this afternoon, however, I have looked up the verse he told us he had been given for us, Jeremiah 13:11, I am more confused than ever. It is really not positive.

" 'For as a belt is bound around a man's waist, so I bound the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to me,' declares the LORD, 'to be my people for my renown and praise and honor. But they have not listened.'"

I read the whole chapter and it is even worse. I then looked up some commentary on it, and it gives me the feeling that God is saying he chose us, gave us all these gifts and opportunities, and we rejected it all. Now we have a sense of entitlement because he chose us, but he has nothing left for us.

Who knows what this website, but read the following exegesis of the verse:

"He (Jeremiah) confirms what we noticed yesterday, — that the Jews entertained a foolish confidence, and promised themselves perpetual happiness, because God had chosen them as his people. This indeed would have been a perpetual glory to them, had they not violated their pledged faith; but their defection rendered void God’s covenant as far as they were concerned: for though God never suffered his faithfulness to fail, however false and perfidious they were, yet the adoption from which they had departed availed them nothing. But as they thought it an unalienable defense, the Prophet again repeats that they had been indeed adorned with singular gifts, but that, as they had not remained faithful, they would be deprived of them"
(http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom18.v.v.html).

Basically, I feel more hopeless than before.

Also, at church Ray told me how he had another picture for me in which I was holding a baby constantly, but holding the baby was keeping me from doing other important things. The point of the dream was that I needed to pass the baby to him so that I could actually do something. This sounds more like it. Maybe I need to pass on my dreams to him so that I can stop carrying them and trying to make them happen. He can take over that responsibility so that I can finally rest, and trust that he will take care of making them come true.