Thoughts from my journal

Summer has certainly ended for Washington and in its place the customary rains of fall have inaugurated the season. Driving to work this morning I was accompanied by the forceful beat of raindrop after raindrop upon my windshield in a relentless downpour. Each falling drop seemed to add an extra weight upon my shoulders, an increasing gravity that I couldn’t detect until walking through the door at work. This gravity dislocated a pillar within my soul, causing everything inside to shift off balance. I could feel it. The feeling that at any moment this pillar may give way causing the entire structure of composure to tumble into a crumble of emotional disaster.

God, what is going on inside me today?

Looking back on my morning, little things that usually paint my face with a smile caused my eyes to roll in annoyance. The drip of the coffee maker brewing. Copper (our dog) running into my legs in excitement for his breakfast.  Mama asking me how my morning was and the schedule for my day…Moment after moment of precious holiness and still my soul was congested, incapable of inhaling the rich scent of joy.

But why, God?

“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full”(John 15:11 ESV).

I turn on the lights of the classroom and squint my eyes as the bright rainbow colors of the toddler room greet me. I try to remain busy, sweeping and wiping down the tables before the little ones arrive for the day. I am annoyed at how fast my mind seems to be running before daylight. And I preach the above verse to God, frozen in a moment of vulnerability with my Beloved and forgetting the obvious that He penned the promise to me.

Joy. Full Joy. More-than-human Joy. God-joy residing in me. Glorious-divine-joy whose perfection removes the essence of lack.

Okay, God, where is that joy now? Jesus paid so that I could have it always and forever and I want it NOW!

 Silence. I wait in a moment of expectation, staring at the pile of crumbs my broom’s movement accumulated. And in an ordinary second void of the spectacular, I feel the truth. It was one I was not to be received with the sight of my eyes or the listening of my ears, but with the senses of my heart.

Immediately, before I had time to object, raw tears swell in my eyes. And these tears seem to escort with them the majesty of understanding. And I hear His familiar gentle voice echo in the quarries of my being, “Your tears are safe in my hands.”  

A sweet release. A needed unlocking. And the drops from my eyes inundate my cheeks. I take a prolonged sigh, treasuring the cool of oxygen into my lungs. My tears cease, only leaving the evidence of swollen eyes and a warm damp-streaked face.

Breathing seems to be easier now, and the secret buried deep rises to the surface.

Chemo. Tomorrow.

Ah, this was the cause of my unrest. The culprit of my distress. The enemy that threatened to bring the one thing I dreaded the most…change. More change. Since returning from Mozambique this summer I have been overdosed with change. Change in community. Change in school plans. Change with a potential romance. Change in my relationship with my brother.

And through all this change I have clung tightly to the one avenue of security, my best friend, my kindred spirit, the one who completes my sentences, who has stood by my side through every type of loss—from losing my first tooth to experiencing my first death—whose arms welcomed me into this world and continue to cradle me through the unexpected, and now even this relationship is threatened by change brought on by chemo. So much change.

Of course Mama will still be Mama. She will still possess every quirk of her personality—the way she twirls her head, squints her eyes, and rapidly blinks when she smiles, or the manner in which she purses her lips when she is in deep thought. She will still contain her profound love for beauty and life found in the smallest of daily wonders. She will still nurture the remarkable dreams nestled snugly within her heart.

But she is a woman of incredible energy and enthusiasm. She seems to be constantly satiated on optimism. Her voice characterized by authentic perkiness. Her hugs are marked by such intentionality and tight squeezes minutely shy of cutting off the circulation in one’s arms. Her laughs are so voluminous they shroud the atmosphere in life and bliss. This, this consecrated grain of Mama’s nature that so many times I overlooked because of its constancy, it is this grain that may be temporarily frozen by the frost of nausea and exhaustion through the winter of chemotherapy.  

And I feel helpless. I can no longer delay the effects of cancer as I can the coming of winter. The last of my tears, the castaway of the morning’s emotion, slowly moistens my eye.

The smallest glimpse of fresh sunlight shines through the window and twinkles in dotted patterns on the wooden floor, a portion of the pattern landing atop my broom’s dust pile. I dispose of the crumbs and stare at the light. For some reason it brings me comfort, hope, peace. To think that such clear light gleamed upon unwanted trash, the rejected remains from the ground. There is beauty in the ashes.

And perhaps this is where His subtle answer to my question is to be found. Perhaps joy is too powerful a force to be limited to smiles and laughter. Perhaps its existence is the most glorious when oozing forth from groaning cries and salty tears. Perhaps rainbow beams glitter more awe through stormy skies.  Perhaps light can better reflect off teardrops. Perhaps it is here where amazing grace is inhaled.

Because two thousand years past He penetrated the threshold from heavenly to dust, that He might be called Immanuel, God with us. With us through the laughter. With us through the sorrow. With us in the fruitfulness. With us in the barrenness. With us in the constancy. With us in the change.

And this answer resonates within. Joy is not subject to the laughter. The fruitfulness. The constancy. It is found prior, in the miracle of the “with us.” In the existence of light dwelling upon broom’s crumbs. Of heavenly resting on dust. Of beauty among the ashes. Of Immanuel with us.

Driving home hours later and the raindrops persist. My mind flashes back to the heaviness of this morning brought on by the weight of the precipitation. But now, I see a hidden splendor within these drops. Rather than park my car in its usual abode within the garage, I park just outside under the drizzle canopy. I open my door and feel the rain gently caress my exposed face. I raise my gaze to the thick clouds and allow the downpour to soak into my cotton shirt and jeans. He is here now. Immanuel. Tears from heaven mixed with the saltiness of my own. He is with us in the weeping. And a thin smile creeps its way across my lips. Joy.