I need some motivation...please!

A while back I began writing about the experience of giving my father’s eulogy, and the experiences that led to that moment. I planned on it being a full length memoir of sorts about his faith journey intermingled with mine, and the places it crossed to lead to that day. I had a horrible time starting, and after writing only a little, I just put it to the side. I would like to post what I had written, and see what you all think. I am not begging for compliments, but looking for motivation to continue the process. Please leave any comments you have positive, negative or neutral. I would like to see if you responses spark a new drive in me to keep writing about those experiences.


Thanks!

I find myself in a storage closet. They claim it is the pastor’s study, but as my elbows bump into music stands, and I am forced to dodge and old worn out piano, I do not feel the comfort that a place of quiet mediation should bring upon its inhabitants. I pace back and forth in the cramped space trying to find my breath...my thoughts...my words. I sit down, stand up, pace some more. Minutes seem like days, and I am constantly reminded of my reason for being here. You cannot escape it in this place, it is not possible. The sounds, the smell, the frigid air, there is no mistaking where I am and why I am there.



Ever since I can remember, when my nerves are at their peak I have this unquenchable feeling that there is phlegm sticking to the back of my throat. I have a constant fear that I will open my mouth and not be able to speak because of the crippling concoction coming up from my lungs and into my throat. Every couple of minutes I leave the closet to search out a place where I can dislodge this mucus. As I walk through the halls, I avoid people’s eyes, but they have an inability to avoid me. Their words are everything but comforting. For the most part, they make me feel completely inadequate and only heighten my anxiety. By the time I reach the restroom it feels like my sinuses have completely drained, and are entirely blocking my esophagus. No matter how many times I try to spit I still feel the lingering remnants, and I still have the fear that when I open my mouth to speak nothing will come out.


Back in the closet I sit down at a small cushioned chair and open my bible. I thumb through the pages that I have marked, ensuring myself that they are the perfect verses for the occasion. I cautiously read over my notes to reassure myself that I will tread a line of strong emotional depth and evangelism without making anyone in the room feel uncomfortable being in the pew. I want people to know my heart. I want them to know that there is only one way to heaven, and only so much time to find the way. However, I also want them to feel like the God who became man to save them from death is approachable. They need a strong dose of hope with just a little fear to fuel the fire.


There is a small peep hole in the door leading out to the sanctuary. As I look out of this portal into my future, I can only see half of the room, and it is completely empty. I know the people who will fill this half of the room, some of them personally but most of them only by occupation. I also know why the seats are empty. This half of the room is not anxious to enter a place where there can only be real emotion. Walls can only stand for so long before those seats break them down. My older brother had found out this fact only a moment earlier as the emotions finally sank in as he sat in a pew on that side of the room and wept. This is the side of the room that I so desperately want to talk to, but right now I fell like when I open my mouth they will only hear silence, and the whimpering noise of a child calling out for his father.


The last time I remember crying out for my father was when I was only three years old. It had only been a couple months since we had moved from my birthplace of Macomb, Illinois to Clearwater, Florida. As a young child I was prone to rolling right off of my bed, and it stuck with me until the day I rolled out of a bunk bed. Pain can quickly correct habits. On a hot, humid night in Clearwater I rolled out of my bed on to the rock hard linoleum floor. Reeling in pain from the crash, I rolled underneath the bed and became paralyzed with fear in the darkness. I yelled out for my dad. I am sure that he thought it was something much more serious, because it was an extremely rare occasion that I would scream for him and not for my mom. In my mind, this situation seemed too scary for my mom, it was something only dad could handle. He stormed into the room, but couldn’t find me. I continued to yell in the darkness, and he echoed back my name until our game of Marco Polo led to him discovering my location and saving me from the shadows.


I am sure there were other times I called out for my father’s help, but in all honesty I cannot remember them. My dad was unapproachable for most of his life. The world had made him a rough, cold, emotionless machine. For most of my time with him I feared him, avoided him, or was disgusted by him. So I guess the question you may have is, what am I going to say when I walk through that door? Why am I the one who will stand at the podium? Why have I been chosen to perform my father’s funeral?