The Alligator

Abiding in Hope

by

This is a modern day parable, if it’s ok that a parable is actually happened.

We are in the season of Advent so I should be writing about Advent, but I want to tell you this story. So, consider this story my Advent gift to you.

My friend Douglas went to bed one night and dreamed he was wrestling an alligator.

There was no reason for this. He had not eaten Cajun swamp soup the night before. He had not read ‎Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile to his granddaughter before he tucked her into bed. The alligator just showed up.

My husband and I have traveled with Douglas and his wife. I have never heard him express an interest in alligators. I have never seen him peering into the waters of South Florida hoping to see one. He lives in Missouri, and sleeps in a bed. Neither are alligator habitat.

Douglas is not an animal behaviorist. He is not a wrestler. He was ill-equipped to encounter an alligator anywhere, much less in his bed. According to Wikipedia, an average adult alligator weighs 790 pounds and is 13 feet long. Douglas is fairly tall, but he was clearly outmatched by the alligator.

And then there are the teeth. Enough said.

Douglas wrestled with the alligator so fiercely, he fell out of bed. The fall resulted in bruising and blood and his wife, who at this point knew nothing about the alligator (it was long gone), called an ambulance. Douglas spent several days in the hospital. The doctors ran tests “just to make sure” as they say.

Douglas is a pretty healthy guy, fairly active, volunteers at a clinic, and helps his son in his restaurant. So everyone was surprised when the tests revealed four blockages in his heart, a tumor in his kidney and another in his stomach. He had never experienced any symptoms. Any of these conditions could have taken his life. 

None of this would have been discovered without the alligator.

Conclusion: sometimes God sends alligators to reveal to us what we need to know. 

I don’t think God sends us bad things like tornados or pandemics. You are on your own if you want to ponder that. You can read Virus as a Summons to Faith: Biblical Reflections in a Time of Loss, Grief, and Uncertainty by Walter Brueggemann if you want to think more about whether God sends us destruction. I do think God is in the alligator-size wrestling we do when we face challenges. And I do believe the gift of wrestling is revelation. We learn more about ourselves and one another and God in the wrestling. We discover things that might have been our end, or at least diminished our lives, if we had not wrestled.

Is there an alligator in your life right now? A defiant child? A challenging co-worker? A question you can’t shake?

I have a gopher in the backyard. I live on the edge of a wild space and there is a gopher in the backyard tearing up the hostas. I don’t know what to do about the creature. Who was here first? I own the land, but does that include the dirt? Does the gopher know I have ownership? All this leads to how I feel about creation. Does Gopher deserve a place to live? (Now I have capitalized the creature. She/he has been given greater authority.) So I am wrestling with a gopher (not literally) and actually I am wrestling with how we interact with nature. There are snakes in the backyard too. I try not to look. I am queasy about my place in creation. Can I advocate for the planet and condemn the Gopher who has moved in next door? How does my micro gopher experience relate to the macro state of the planet?

Is there an alligator in your life right now? A defiant child? A challenging co-worker? A question you can’t shake?

I retired several years ago. I know retirement is supposed to be an extended vacation, hours of bliss, and days of freedom, but that hasn’t been my experience. Retirement has been an alligator I have wrestled with.

I was a pastor. It was a role of importance. On Sundays I spoke, and people listened to me. “Good sermon,” they said as they left the church. There was recognition. Retirement is quiet. No one waits for me at the door with a handshake. During retirement, as I looked for things to do, I met a new friend who lives in a nursing home, a place I never would have discovered before I retired. Many of the people who live in the nursing home have been homeless. They do not know me as a pastor. They see me as the person who shows up occasionally and is squeamish about bodily functions. I am awkward and self-conscious. I wrestled with how I fit in on my visits. More and more there have been revelations. A big one: the friend and the others in the nursing home are just like me in God’s eyes. My master of divinity degree and resume' mean nothing. The people in the nursing home and I have lived different lives, but ultimately, we are the same, flesh and blood children of God. My friend and I laugh a lot and hug when our visit is over. That is what it means to be human. It is enough.

Has the disaffiliation of churches been an alligator? We have certainly wrestled with it. The disaffiliation began as a difference in biblical interpretation, but it revealed deeply held beliefs about our identity. I am sorry that our commitment to community was not stronger than our convictions. I am sorry we are not still together. If nothing else, disaffiliation revealed that love is harder than we thought.

Gophers. Retirement. Disaffiliation. Your particular alligator. The topics vary, but the value is in the wrestling.

Alligators roam churches. I think that is ok. What better place to wrestle? AA meets in the basement, a gathering of expert wrestlers. The Finance Committee meets the first Monday of the month. They wrestle with the anxiety money creates and the mission of the church.

The youths gather on sagging couches in the youth room. They wrestle with the messages they receive on TikTok and their place in the world and something called grace that the church people keep insisting on.

There is a funeral on Friday. We wrestle with loss and grief. The church is actually a laboratory for wrestling. That’s a very good thing. Wrestling leads to revelation and revelation leads us closer to God.

We don’t like wrestling. We would like to steer around it when we encounter it. But it serves a purpose.

Since the alligator dream, Douglas has had heart surgery. The tumor in his kidney has been addressed. In a few months he will have surgery on his stomach. It is all serious and scary and life-threatening, but it would not have been discovered if he hadn’t been wrestling. He says he feels great.

Thank God for the alligator. 

And Merry Christmas. 

The Rev. Cindy Hickman is a retired elder having served three amazing churches. She is now "a free agent for grace." She spends her time reading and writing and is grateful for both. She resides with her husband and their hound dog Ike in West Des Moines.