"The Premonition" (digital photomanipulation), Michael Vincent Manalo
There's a gulf between them and I, created by the detritus flooding out of my soul after years of being locked inside. Sometimes you hide in a cave so deep that you have nowhere else to throw your garbage, so you live with it. The door has been guarded by the armed guards of fear and shame and no one gets past them alive.
They say self-hatred is as old as sin. You can tell me not to feel it, but I'll just put it in hiding again. It's like a lifelong addiction that has consumed you: you don't see any way out because you've been surrounded for so long.
Can you throw it off if you come out of hiding? Or will coming out into the open just trigger a new kind of hiding?
......................................
There are no small questions these days. Distract with work, the pool, the children, the housekeeping. The inner monologue keeps rolling. Doubt is a snowball tossed down a mountain and you are in the valley right in it's path. Huddle up in a ball against the pain and it will roll over you and carry you further away from joy.
Should one keep writing when it's this dark? Sometimes it feels like the only window of hope is the flourescent computer screen hovering over the keyboard in the deepest part of the night. Writing feels as selfish as everything else right now.
Is it an encouragement to anyone to share this heavy grief?
Or is it time to shutter the doors on this space that was once so hopeful, where I've wrestled my demons and counted my joys and poured my soul out in front of the world. It's hard to know if there's an end to this tunnel because I can't yet see the light.
You drive through it, fog lights on, and all the familiar landmarks are foreign. Only the blackness of the tar in front of you assures you that you are on the road. You slow down. You search for the familiar. You drive beyond your headlights and it is trust that propels you forward, the moving car in the wilderness of white, the waiting for protection, the begging for a clear ravine where you regain your boundaries.
Your vision is dimmed in the mist. You aren't certain of what you see...or whether you'll see it in time.
You stand in the fog, and the horizon has disappeared. Only the faded glow of the moon is visible. The trees are mere shadows, and your house is dark and distant, just a few feet away.
But you hear in the mist. The lone whistle of a distant train. The faint crow of the pheasant pleading through the darkness. You smell the mud, the sap running, the fecund woods breathe life that you cannot see.
You feel the thrum of traffic, the crackle of the frozen earth beneath the sheepskin boots, and the surety of terra firma frozen beneath your soles, the suck of the mud in the trenches of the driveway.
You smell the earthy air, the wetness. Your lungs pull in promise of daylight, promise that this is just a season of dimness.
You know it will dissipate in sunlight, burned clear by the warming rays of the spring sun, the breaking of day destroying the desolation, misdirection, confusion.
God's Word. Sometimes it's shrouded in the mist. You can't latch onto your purpose, and read Scripture skewed through misty eyes, and wonder when daybreak will burn off doubt and confusion and despair.
The reality is the horizon is still there. You see the lights of home glaring through the fog, and you home in and point yourself in that direction. You know clarity is just moments away, through the dark misty night and the fog that confounds.
You look up at the dim reflection of the moon, the craters disappearing in the glow of condensation, but there it is...the moon, the lone star flickering through, the visage of hope in a night of uncertainty.
He's there. Whether you see Him or not. Whether the Word is shrouded in mystery, whether the verses cloud together in heaps of gray, whether hope seems far away and tenuous.
The cold rises up from frozen earth and envelopes the whole world in conundrum, the conundrum of your pain and your grief shrouding His rescue, His provision.
Look for home. Smell the give of earth melting to promise of harvest. Hear the whistle in the dark, the whisper behind you that breathes, "this is the way, walk in it." (Isaiah 30:21) Don't be lost in the sensory fog, the vision lost, the purpose shrouded.
Keep reading. Read on through the mist of the Psalm that speaks uncertainty and find yourself, finally, in the conclusion of praise. Praise for mist and mystery. Praise for unseen glory and shipwrecked humanity.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
(from Psalm 139)
Read on to the praise, the purpose, the glory. For in the mist, He writes our story, shrouds it from our own eyes, so that in the end, it is He who garners worship and praise. When I am in the mist, He is seeing all. When my dreams...my horizon...are shrouded, they are still there, present in His promise, protected by His love, written already in His book, all these misty days of my life when I struggle to sense Him, to sense my direction, to sense my path.
Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed...so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith— to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! (Romans 16:25-27)
I'm going to put this in writing. Because I trust that someone out there has felt this way, needs to read this, needs to hear that someone else is in the same lonely place. Because writing it somehow brings the breath back into lungs spasming and the light back into eyes behind those squeezed-tight eyelids. Because I know somewhere someone else is crying out for help from Jesus as they put brick upon brick, slap mortar, build build build walls and hope they're invisible walls, walls nobody can see and will keep you safe in here forever. Because, if you read that I am right here, where you are feeling all alone, then you will know the truth - you who are like me, and not alone - and the truth will set you free. (John 8:32)
Grace. Grace. Grace. The name of my favorite singer at the moment. The name of my favorite blogger at the moment. The name of the book on my nightstand. You get the picture: it's showing up everywhere. Except I don't understand grace, I don't often offer it, I can't wrap my arms around it.
Part of me just wants to say what I'm saying out loud to everyone: I'm fine. I'm alright (that's a Wisconsin favorite). Nope, nothing's wrong.
I've worked my whole life to have a serene face. (A college professor who worked on a reservation for decades called it "typical Native American stoicism".) Is it really worth it to let it crumble now? I vacillate. I can't decide. If I worked at it, I know I could stop that one cheek muscle from twitching when I want to cry, and turn the flesh back into stone, and probably someday I'd even be able to cover up the pain again with quirky stories and sarcastic jokes. I know, because I already tried that method of dealing with what's boiling up inside right now.
What if I don't talk because the words just don't come. I don't have a name for the emotions I'm feeling these days anyway, I don't have a word for this mood, I can't explain why I feel the way I feel. I don't know if it's right or wrong to feel this way.
Looking up into hope.
An ordinary silo turns sunlight into turquoise.
Everything feels wrong.
I think it just boils down to being in too vulnerable a place, too weak a place, to put things out there into this world. For now I just need to hold it in my heart where just God and I can see it, and He can speak truth. Everything I hear and see and do just feels tainted. Like it might all just go up in smoke if I even recognize it's presence. Like it's all lies. Like I can't distinguish, in those spoken words, what is true and what is false.
If I didn't have kids, I'd run away to the mountains and get my head straight in a big pile of snow and some very thin air. But I do have kids.
If I didn't have a husband, I'd probably stay up all night and zone out in front of a couple of movies. Or finish that 300 page book on my bedside table. But I do have a husband.
If I didn't have things that needed accomplishing, I'd probably crawl into bed and stay there with my eyes shut for a few days. But I do have things to accomplish.
If I didn't...didn't...didn't.
But I do, I do, I do.You have hedged me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me. (Psalm 139:5) He has walled me in so I cannot escape; he has weighed me down with chains. (Lamentations 3:7)
I look back and I can't go back there. I look forward and I have no idea which path to choose.
And yet...a glimmer now and then. I drove home tonight with the music blaring until my eardrums hurt, and I did hear truth and, just for a moment, hope bled through the black.
What will come of us today?
What we need we cannot say
It’s been a long long time since I’ve been so afraid
And as we all fall down it’s hard
to see a brighter day, but
I see a tiny light
Like a flashbulb sparkle in the night
I see a tiny light
Telling everyone to hold on tight
What will come of all our pride?
This house of stone is crumbled from the inside
It’s been a long long war, now the battle’s drawing near
