It All Matters

Circa 1977 OBC Year Book (Pat is 2nd from left)

She wouldn't have known, 

and I feel badly about that,   

but I think that's the way of it most of the time.

I was invited last week to write a tribute for the celebration of life service of Pat Hugli Seeney, a long ago mentor of mine back in our Brimley Road Alliance Youth, Campus Life Scarborough, Ontario Bible College (Tyndale) days.  Way back then.

Thanks to the wonder of Facebook, I had only recently been reconnected with her husband, Dave, also a friend from 'back in the day'.  Pat herself suffered from Huntington's disease, something that significantly reduced her connection with the world in the latter part of her life. 

In the tribute, which I'll include in a minute so we have the whole story, I talk about her influence on my life at a crucial time in my own spiritual development.  It mattered.  It mattered a lot.  And it was so ordinary-looking at the time that the spectacular-to-me trajectory of it would not have been at all obvious.  Not then.  Not to her.  Not even to me.  Not back then.

And then, these remembrances of Pat connect me with a number of totally unrelated, random conversations I've been having of late.  Conversations about that nasty bit of cognitive behaviour so many of us find ourselves sucked into so much of the time.  I'm talking about what happens whenever we entertain the idea that somehow what we have to contribute isn't important.  Isn't enough.  Isn't accomplishing anything.  Doesn't count.

I'd say it might just be me, but for all the unrelated, random conversations, and not just lately, but over so much of my pastoral life.  Quite a few of us, it seems, hear this stuff in our heads.  

"You're not enough."  

"All that you're pouring yourself into, it doesn't matter."

"Why bother?  You're just wasting your time/breath/money/soul."

"Nobody cares.  Nobody notices."

And various other renditions of the same kind of thing.  Utterly demotivating, all of it.  And in our moments of exhaustion, discouragement, setback, criticism, it could derail us if we let it.

And it's not new.

"I have laboured in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all."

That last one was Isaiah (49:4 the first half of the verse).  Yup.  Him too.

Okay, I'll put the tribute here so you can get the whole story, and then I want to get back to something.

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Remembering Pat   (1955-2021)

Intelligent.  Gentle.  Faithful.

These are the strongest memories of Pat for me, as I reflect on her enormous influence on my spiritual formation at a crucial time in my life.  Being a teenager in Scarborough in the 70’s was a rough, sometimes terrifying emotional and spiritual space to navigate. 

But every Tuesday night, we were safe.

Pat was our Living Unit Group leader – often affectionately referred to as our LUGHead - in the Campus Life program at Midland Avenue Collegiate Institute.  She shepherded a group of about six of us girls with grace and patience and love, week after week, for about three years steady.  I remember that there were no stupid questions.  I remember that our ideas and opinions mattered.  I remember that through Pat, God seemed welcoming and thoughtful and real. 

Maybe that’s why, some 50 years later, most of us in the group are still pursuing God.  This is no small statement.  That shy and terrified teenager safely tucked into Tuesday night with Pat would be shocked at what God decided to do with me over the course of my life.  I modelled much of my pastoral life after her example.  The security forged under Pat’s care launched a courage that would ultimately send me to the other side of the planet.  Who knew? 

Maybe Pat did.  Maybe her intelligent, gentle faithfulness saw potential in me I had yet to discover.  Or maybe not.  She just loved us anyways.

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Of course I hope that Pat's many other contributions to life and kingdom and family and community were obvious to her, and she enjoyed a strong sense of self as seen through the eyes of a God who no doubt constantly reassured her with "Well done."  But I am sorry we lost touch, and that, in the end, I could only properly thank her with words to be read at her service.  

And all this brings me to two motivations today.

One, to make sure to say thank you more often.  To reach out and let people know how much their input into my life mattered and still matters.  That what may have seemed small and insignificant to them, constituted truck loads of confidence and guidance for me.

And two, to stop listening to the lies.  All that crazy self-talk that tries to convince me I'm not making any difference.  Just.  Stop it.  It all matters.  Every little bit of it.  We honestly have no idea how much we can contribute into the unleashing of dreams and potential in the heart of every single human being we come into contact with.  All the big and little ways of it.  We just don't know.  We can't know.

Isaiah again, correcting his own crazy self-talk:  "Yet, what is due me is in the LORD's hand, and my reward is with my God."  Isaiah 49:4, that's the last half of the verse.

There.  That's where we leave it.  We do our part and let God take care of where it goes from there.  And we simply trust it.  Trust that the ways of our contribution to the bigger purposes of the mission of God will be turned into gold in the hands of the Lord.  

I'll end with sharing a link Dave sent me, a song by Randy Stonehill called In Jesus' Name, just because it reminds us of the same things, and because music is so powerful for reaching into those deeper places of our souls and psyches.  

Encouragement and blessings to all.