The in-between

I woke up from 40 minutes of unconsciousness to an alien sound. It took me a few seconds to understand that it was me making that sound, a vast empty sucking sound, the hollow of my chest pulling air in slowly a few times every minute in a chaotic, rhythmless gasp for life. In between, someone was pushing sickly sweet oxygen down into my belly through the purple ambu bag, and I remember trying to swallow it, or breathe it in. I was looking up into the eyes of a coworker from the University who still works in the ER, and she was calling my name through a long tunnel, her voice echoing off the walls as it bounced it's way down to where I lay in a cavern deep below the crowd who seemed to be working on my body. If there is an in-between, a place between alive and dead, I have been there. It is a platform suspended, invisible, where your soul perches like a frightened bird, too afraid to rejoin a quavering, hurting body, the glass ceiling that opens to heaven now shut above you, beat your wings against it as you would to get back to that dark warm firelight of something as light as air and as flowing as water, some element that doesn't exist here.

Brother, he’s suffered like a tree taken down

Wept as he witnessed his dreams carved out

And how can a man just keep walking around

With his heart full of holes

But oh, His bow is on the strings

And the tune resonates in the open space

To show us how emptiness sings:

Glory to God, Glory to God!

In fullness of wisdom,

He writes my story into his song,

My life for the glory of God.

~How Emptiness Sings, Christa Wells~

I remember well the first time this happened. I was 17 and had played my last heart beat out on the stage at a dear friend's wedding. The last notes of the piano fading into the postlude, I wavered through the crowd to the bathroom, my smile wooden as friends complimented my playing. I collapsed there and waited for someone to come bring me my mother. I felt my soul leaving my body, and the sound in my ears was the rhythmic "whumph-whumph" of helicopter blades, helicopter blades hovering just over the water, and I could feel the ocean spray kicked up by the windstorm, only then I noticed it wasn't ocean water, it was ice water my mother was splashing on me, and I was on the cold tile floor of the bathroom and pinned there, motionless. Her voice came through a tunnel, too. On that ambulance ride, I flew away, and felt the warmth of heaven touch me even though I kept my eyes closed on purpose. But something pulled me back and I opened my eyes to look down at my naked self in an ER room and hear my mother calling me, frantically, through that tunnel.

It happened again when I was 22, just before I feel in love. And I think that time I almost made it there. I was so ready to be done. I had no idea what joy lay before me. I was so tired by the work He had me doing. I was so ready to go home. That time my heart stopped.

Then it was 11 years, and I almost forgot about the in-between, until I saw it again in August. And now again, suddenly, so quickly, on Saturday.

Four times. Four times I've almost made it all the way to heaven. If there is an in-between. And four times, He's comforted me, and then sent me back, said there is more for me to do here on this turning Earth. Sent me back to the chaos and the cold and the separateness.

Before Christ died, there was a place called Paradise, or Abraham's side, a place where believers went to await further vindication and ascent to heaven. But that was after they died. Is that an in-between? There is a powerful story I love in Luke, the story of the rich man and the beggar named Lazarus. This story tells me that it doesn't matter if I've seen the in-between. It doesn't matter if I've met my angel. It doesn't matter if I shout it from the rafters. It won't change anyone's mind, if the prophets and Moses cannot.

Paul speaks of a man who was caught up to the 3rd heavens and saw things he cannot even put into words. Is this the in-between? Are there those of us who are brought to the in-between for comfort rather than just to prophesy, like the author of Revelation, who was brought to heaven to describe it to us? My daughter Amy knows the in-between, I, too have seen it. It is a place I can't describe but I know well, and when I get there I know nothing else but thankfulness and peace. I am surrounded by powerful emotions and beings and other souls, and I forget all about the former life, and I am wordless and wise and only a whisper in a whole breathing current I've suddenly joined.

Coming back here is so hard. This world is cold and harsh and lonely. I cry for days and I can't tell anyone why. It is because I am separate again. Completely by myself. This life is so hard. It is not just because it is hard to recover. Yes, I am covered head to toe in bruises and my physical reserves are tapped out and all I can do is rest and wait for strength to return to these veins. But it is the harsh slam of the door to that welcome tide where I am at once joined again to Love and no longer lonely, no longer striving, no longer working, no longer suffering - that is what I mourn in these days of tears as I come back to life slowly and painfully from the in-between.

So tame my flesh

And fix my eyes

That tethered mind free from the lies

But I'll kneel down

Wait for now

I'll kneel down

Know my ground

Raise my hands

Paint my spirit gold

And bow my head

Keep my heart slow

Cause I will wait, I will wait for you

~I Will Wait, Mumford & Sons~

Finding clarity

"Nor height, nor depth, neither any other created thing, shall be able to sever me from the love of God, which is in our Lord Yeshua The Messiah." (Romans 8:39)

I panic in the flashback because I can't remember who I'm married to. My husband looks long and deep, brown eyes meeting faltering brown, and says he'll help me remember. Day turns into evening, thick with snowflakes as we slip slide our way to town to watch my old hockey team play. Another snippet of the nightmare creeps into consciousness...I remember trying out for the girls' summer softball team there in my dream, and they tell me I am too old to play, 28 already. I have forgotten a decade of birthdays and I squeeze my eyelids tight and try to remember them, shadows sliding across consciousness as impressions of memories try to break through my sleep.

I find truth in my sons kisses and my husbands laughter, in the pages of my Bible as Romans leaps out like a sword to sever me from dreams. The kids rock out through the night to Shawn Groves, and his lyrics soak in, make my brain slippery to dreams and nothing catches all night long. I wake up to peace, the world under the blanket of winter and my mind calm and clear as the whispering air, crystalline in the cold. I praise God for the night's sleep, uninterrupted and serene. 

Praise God for the Word that is alive and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing asunder soul and spirit, joints and marrow, judging reasoning and consciousness of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)

No death, life

Angels or demons,

No height, depth

Can come in between us

And Your love

~Shawn Groves, Come By Here~

An angel named Tony

Last night, I met an angel. Aaron and I both. At least we think we did. He pushed past us on the way to the microphone, and whispered to me, "This one's for you." Immediately, upon his touch, the goosebumps and hair standing on end told me to listen up. I looked over at Aaron, and he was pointing to the lyrics on the screen. He knew this was something big right away, and so did I.

I live in fear that, as I struggle through the muddy bog of past memories and trauma, someday the feed spout will quit spouting. Yet every time I open the feed spout - the yellow leather of my Bible, the Living Word - He has words for me. Today it was:

"Come let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us, on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn, he will come to us as the shower, as the spring rains that water the earth. What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. Therefore I have hewn you by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. (Hosea 6:1-6)

These verses speak deep, to my sacrificial but fleeting thoughts of the God who jealously desires my every waking moment. To the discipline He has meted out to me in the face of my failures and deep, caustic sins in my high school and college years. To the time between when he tears us to the time he raises us up. It is not immediate, the rise again. He allows us to sit in our pain for until that third day. I am sitting in that pain now, and waiting for His revival.

I desire peace more than anything else. From the moment I wake up to the moment sleep finally relieves me of my memories, I look for peace like treasure, in the moments in my swing on the porch, in the quiet, resting house when the children are sleeping, in the coolness of twilight and browsing around behind the lens of a camera. I play peace in my melancholy improvisations on the piano and I write peace in my journal. But I am still torn.

And so He sent an angel to sing to us last night. A man named Tony, a huge man, with a voice like gold and gravel all mixed up together. And this is what we heard.

Up and down that lonely road of faith 

I have been there 

Unprepared for the storms and the tides that rise 

I've realized one thing, how much I love you 

And it hurts to see, see you cryin' 

I believe we can make it through the winds of change 

God is great indeed If you believe, in the everlife 

Yeah we gotta 

Make some sense of the peace that's not defined 

And if you just hold on, I won't let ya fall 

We can make it through the storms and the winds of change 

Though I walk through the valley of darkness 

I am not afraid 

Cause I know I'm not alone 

And if the wind blows east, would you follow me 

And if the wind blows north, would ya stay your course 

And if the wind blows west, would ya second guess 

And if it blows to the south, would you count me out 

And if the sun don't shine, would you still be mine

And if the sky turns grey, would you walk away

Would you say I do, if I say I'll be 

And walk this road through life with me 

You know I love you  

On this lonely road of faith 

On this lonely road of faith

I never thought I'd hear the truth - be bound to my husband through this trial, even tighter - from a barfly named Tony in the lyrics of Kid Rock. But I'm still riding high today, because I know that feeling, when the angel touches you, and I had it again last night. God hasn't left me. He is waiting to raise me up and give me the peace I so desire..."make some sense of the peace that's not defined".

I met him again - Tony - the man Tony, at the same karaoke night the next week. He couldn't remember the song, and said he didn't know it. When he sang, tears came to my eyes, but not because of the gold and gravel. It was gone, and all that was left was a flat-pitched sweaty man singing about everything but Jesus Christ.

I thanked him anyway, for singing in an angel's voice to me the week before. He looked at me like I had sprouted horns and went back to his shots of vodka and pitchers of beer.