The Good Portion

When I was a kid, life was like the first pages of a new book. All excitement, all magic, all potential, so much to look forward to. The end of the story was so far away. Now, in my fifties, after so many chapters - after the death of two marriages, of several friendships, my mother, the Town of Paradise, and, most recently, a close friend - every turn of the page takes me closer to the end. Instead of excitement, I feel sadness. The story is nearly over. It’s not the story I was hoping for, but I also love it. It’s my story, and it’s the only one I’ve got. The suddenness and totality of the destruction of the Camp Fire on November 8 showed me that this life can destroy everything I care about at any given moment in time. Ever since then, I can’t find the kind of excitement over things that I used to have, because I know how quickly they can disappear. I’ve always “known” that, but mostly in theory. My greatest losses came when I still saw more chapters ahead than I had left behind.

Many years ago, when I was a 17-year-old Southern California girl, a young man I met at the mall invited me to church. I agreed, and thus began my relationship with the Word of Faith movement. The church we attended was very different from my Lutheran church. The worship services were charismatic, something I’d never experienced before. And the people were devoted to the Scriptures in a way I’d never seen before. Those folks really knew their Bibles! They could rattle off quote after quote. And that’s because they believed that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ,” which it does (Rom. 10.17). By repeating these quotes, they believed they could build their faith and speak their desires into existence. Only later did I realize that they really knew only certain parts of their Bibles, the parts that included the promises they wanted to claim and the list of sins that might keep them from gaining them. It was all about living your best life now (though th