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Doing Life Together: Hiding in the House
By Criss Bertling

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35)

“Good morning, ladies. We’re so glad you’re here today.” The new minister choked back a chuckle as she observed her new “flock” from the stage. The word transformation did not begin to describe the sum of her life experiences. Faded photos of a radical young feminist bore no resemblance to the 50-something grandmother now responsible for the spiritual development of hundreds of women.

A conservative childhood, rebellious youth, and failed marriage formed the bedrock of an obsessive drive to succeed. As a professional, few could compete. As a mother, wife, friend, neighbor, daughter, and sister, she was abysmal. Relationships were secondary and that priority took its toll. Her son became a face on a milk carton and her 18-year-old daughter married a stranger. Then her husband announced, “I’m in love with someone else.” Her world crashed and she began to implode.

After weeks of sleeping all day and crying all night, she picked up her father’s tattered Bible. Could God forgive her? Would He hear her prayers? Did she even care? But still she read. She tried to pray in her pit of depression but her self-loathing was too strong. Suicide was scary yet how much longer could she live this way? God, are you there?

The incessant knocking at the door became louder. Leave me alone! Day after day at precisely 5:10 p.m. the knocking came. It would continue for five minutes and then “a church lady” would drive away, but not before leaving a note of encouragement and a container of food. Pests, just go away!

Hours blurred into days, days into weeks. Loneliness and despair tightened their grip. Yet that tattered Holy Bible kept calling to her. So she read. Then one rainy afternoon a gentle nudging spoke to her heart: “Today, open the door. I am waiting for you.” God?

5:10 came as did the familiar knock. This time she opened the door.

We are not meant to live in isolation. God designed us to care about one another. We barely survive when we don’t. We flourish when we give and receive love the way God designed it. We are the sum of our experiences, our relationships, our heredity, talents, gifts, personalities and dreams. And God, if we let Him, will take the whole of who we are and make us better than we can imagine. He will use us in the lives of family, friends, neighbors, even strangers, so that they and we can live abundant, fulfilled lives.

Sound too unreal to you? There was a time when I would have agreed with you. I am the women who opened the door at 5:10. I have suffered disastrous consequences as a result of choices, my own and those of others. I have grieved the deaths of more loved ones than I ever imagined. I have desperately sought answers for a child destroyed by perverse evil. I have felt helpless as disease destroyed the normalcy of friends’ lives. I have cried with strangers living lives of quiet desperation. Yet God has given me indescribable hope and inexplicable joy today. He has filled my life with friends, family and clear purpose.

Today I understand the value of living, loving, caring, sharing, crying and laughing with the people God puts in my life. It is about doing life together; it is about loving one another – and finding great joy in the process.