Proof of God in a Yellow Balloon

So many people say they can’t believe in God because they have seen no proof of Him. I wonder – if you say you can’t believe in something, would you know proof if you saw it? Or are you so busy believing that you don’t believe that you miss the proof He sends? What if you are missing out on something great because instead of believing in something powerful and beautiful, you simply believe you can’t believe?

A few weeks ago, I felt like I was being crushed by emotional burdens. And being a Texan, I wasn’t about to let myself be crushed – instead of being pushed lower, I stood up, stomped by boots, and said “No more. Enough of this wimpy nonsense. I’m getting out from under this burden one way or another.” Being a Christian, I called upon my church for help: some guidance, a prayer, anything that might help me push the weights off my back.

While waiting and trying to schedule a good time to meet with a pastor, Sunday came. We go to church on Sundays.

While sitting in my seat during the sermon, some thoughts rolled into my head like an ocean wave – strong and fast – so fast that I had to catch them before they rolled back out again. I grabbed my pen and the church bulletin and quickly wrote down the words that were pushing, pushing in: fear, worry, anger, hope and love. And balloon. Yes, the helium-filled kind with curly tails of ribbon.

When we got in the car to head home, I asked my husband to please stop in at the grocery store on the way home. “I need to buy some balloons.” To my surprise, my husband didn’t laugh or question or anything. Just “OK.” I’m sure he was thinking, “that’s an odd request….”

I bought five balloons for me and five for my husband; one for each of us representing the words on my hastily scribbled list. Yellow for fear. Purple for worry. Red for anger. Blue for hope. And pink for love. Handing him a black Sharpie, I told my husband what I thought we must do. Label our balloons and then write our hearts on them. What am I angry about? What do I hope for? What am I afraid of? And so on….

Again, surprisingly, no questions or pushback from my husband. He took his Sharpie and followed my instructions. No questions when I said, “Now, we are going to take these balloons down to the lake and let them go. We are going to send our hearts and fears and worries to God, and He will take care of them so we don’t have to anymore.” Did my husband think I was crazy when I said, “He told me so” out loud?

With our word-covered balloons in hand, we walked together down to the edge of the lake, away from the trees. One by one, we read aloud the words of our hearts written on those balloons. I hope I can become a good example for my children. I love you, Lord, even though sometimes it might not seem so. I worry that there won’t be enough, ever, to do the worldly things I still want to do. I am angry that things didn’t turn out the way I thought they would. And Fear –your name scrawled on a yellow balloon.

One by one, we let the balloons go, flying flying flying up into the high, puffy clouds (my 9 year old daughter would know the proper, scientific words for those kind of clouds). Each balloon carried by the wind until we could no longer see their bright colors against the brilliant blue sky.
I saved my ugliest balloon for last. That yellow one. It was especially heavy. The words on it blacker than darkness. Fear. My demon named Fear for you, Lord. I’m sending Him to you because you are a million times and more stronger than he.

I let go of that yellow balloon, tattooed in black ink. It still, appropriately, had remnants of every other balloons’ tail attached to it since it was the last one cut from the bunch. I watched it follow the same path, into the southeast sky, as the nine other balloons before it. I turned to talk to my husband, and when I glanced back up, the yellow balloon, which should have made its way up over our neighborhood at that point, was completely gone, nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t caught in a tree. It hadn’t fallen into the water. It wasn’t there, floating in the air. My mind started spinning. That balloon was the heaviest of all. Perhaps I wasn’t strong enough to send that heaviest of balloons to God on my own.

Nonetheless, the emotional and spiritual uplift created by sending my heart to God with balloons on a breeze is impossible to write in the words I know. I sent an email to my church to let them know I no longer needed that appointment. I have no doubt that the prayers of my sisters and brothers in Christ turned God’s attention to me, and He spoke without hesitation in words of joy that I could understand and capture on a tiny box of white space in my church bulletin.

The lightness of being has lasted for weeks. I feel free to do what needs to be done rather than wasting my attention on emotional angst which helps no one, including myself, and can actually harm those around me who are most precious: my husband, children and dear friends.

Yesterday, I spent 15+ hours at church. I would like to say I was praying or doing something good for someone, but I wasn’t; I was scrapbooking with my girlfriends. Just after midnight, as we were packing up our pretty pictures and papers, we noticed a scary looking man getting out of his car in the darkness of the parking lot furthest from the highway - and nearest us. We stepped back into the hallway, and it was then that I noticed that the door wouldn’t lock. My key will only unlock these doors – they are supposed to lock on their own. Fear crept in. A strange, scary man out there in the dark, a door that won’t lock him out. Fear.

We got in our cars, locked those doors around us and drove away. I watched the scary car with the scary man drive off as I called the police. I saw the strange car drive north on the highway. The policeman never saw the car – vanished. I worried much of the night about that unlocked door, hoping the police had checked on our church often during the dark hours to make sure the strange man hadn’t gone back.

While I was giving sleepy morning kisses to my daughter in her second story bedroom this morning, I glanced out the window and could hardly believe my eyes when I saw a yellow balloon stuck in one of the trees in my backyard.

No. You can lurk around my house. You can lurk around my head. You can lurk around my heart. But I will not carry you. And my strength to beat demons in a yellow balloon is proof of God’s existence, God’s love, God’s grace and God’s mercy because I’m just the scrapbooking lady; nothing more. Nothing more – without Him.

If you still need proof to believe, do the math. What are the odds that a stray balloon, specifically a stray, yellow balloon, would land in a tree in my backyard? Personally, I choose to believe, and the answer is: chances were 1:God.