Worth Far More

Affection [teaches] us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who “happen to be there.” Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.
- C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves

This is my unlikely friend Ann. We have looked at each other on more than one occasion in the past and said, “I would NEVER in a million years have guessed I’d be spending time with someone like you.”

Ann came to our church in the fall of 2003, just having walked out of drug rehab for perhaps the tenth time. She was disillusioned with ‘the same old crap’, as she would put it, on recovering from an addiction and was looking for more power. She suspected God might have it. She was 31 and extremely street smart. She, however, didn't know church-speak and, I’m sure, had absolutely NO idea what the term propitiation meant.

Then there’s me, the Church Lady as she called me, then age 48, current or former director of anything church-related, street-stupid, with the capacity of being intoxicated with a thimbleful of communion wine. Yeah. Oh, and I and could’t talk smack and no idea what the term tweaking meant. (If you don’t know what smack means, that’s a good thing.)

We’re kind of the Odd Couple. She’d get pretty excited about teeny tiny pieces of Ice. I, on the other hand, thought you needed a mug-full for it to even be worthwhile.

We have some similarities too. She’s been assaulting her dopamine supply for the last 14 years with uncontrolled substances; my dopamine supply has been assaulted by some unknown enemy to the point where I have Parkinson’s. We both like a good guffaw and are both recovering Control Freaks. (I went to a Celebrate Recovery meeting with her once and actually got to say, “Hello, my name is Connie. I’m a recovering Control Freak.”) Ann was very popular in high school and an active athlete. I wasn't popular or an athlete, but was active in academics and student government.

Perhaps the most striking similarity between us is that we are both beginning to understand the truth of this statement by Eugene Peterson:

…[In following Jesus] we have renounced initiative and taken up obedience. We have renounced clamoring assertion in favor of quiet listening…we accompany Jesus into new relationships, to odd places and odd people. Keeping company with Jesus, observing what he does and listening to what he says, develops into a life of answering God, a life of responding to God, which is to say, a life of prayer.

A year ago people who love Ann prayed for her and donated the tuition for her to spend 60 days in the residential treatment program of Teen Challenge in Minneapolis.

While there she experienced the love of God, accepted her identity as his child, quit smoking, and dealt with her drug dependency. She also received more pieces of mail than anyone there in recent memory .

After she returned home, she and her longtime boyfriend decided to honor God in their relationship with marriage and her Dream Wedding was put together in two weeks. Ann returned to her job as a customer service representative for a medical insurance firm where she continues to receive stellar ratings by clients for her patient and compassionate help.

Several months ago another dream came true when she and her husband were able to move out of their mobile home into a home they’d purchased, which just so ‘happened’ to be the home her husband’s mother grew up in, coming onto the market at just the right time and for the right price.

Ann has seen God work so many times that she knows for a fact that he is real, he loves her and has a plan for her that is unfolding daily. Hourly.

She is still getting her mind around the irrational fact that grace is free. She admits, when she thinks of her past, she sometimes struggles with feeling unworthy of so many blessings.

Thankfully, she is slowly discovering, what I and many others have already figured out, and what God knew all along, that she is “worth far more than we guessed.”