Monthly Archives: April 2016

Words flood my bloodstream hitching a ride upon the squashed-pie-shaped red blood cells carrying oxygen. Sentences, phrases, hyperbole are the very thing that my heart beats, and when I’m not writing consistently I struggle for each breath, hungry for the next gulp of air, sure that each sip will be my final farewell. (I’m not being the teensiest bit dramatic or anything. Please feel free to roll your eyes.) But in the past weeks, my lifeblood has drained away as if my muse had sneaked out the window leaving nothing behind her except the curtains flapping in the breeze; like a teenage girl told she couldn’t see that boy anymore.   And how I have chased after her! No stone has been left unturned, no friend’s heart unprobed, no family member left unquestioned. Nope. She’s just gone. Gone, gone, gone.

How do you go on about your daily life when the outlet you count on – your pressure release valve – has rusted closed, and there is no CLR anywhere to be found? I’m a bit afraid my neuroses (Come on, you have them, too.) have replaced all my beloved words on their lazy-river-drift-along in my circulatory system. Not pretty. Well, you pretend she’s coming back and act as if nothing’s changed until she does, of course. (No, not really.) My only answer is to search within and see if I’m off course. Check, that task complete, and I can honestly say, “I don’t know.”

So, perhaps that’s it, this lack of direction that sent my muse scurrying for the distant beckoning blue-topped hills, but I’m still left with the yearning to write something worth reading when it occurs to me that this soul search may be worth scripting. (Of course, it may not be, and in that case, please feel free to go do something else. I’ll never know.) And I began to wonder what fills you then leaves you feeling desolate and deserted when it takes a hiatus from your life: money, friends, hobbies? What has you surfing the barrel of a wave one day then crashes and smashes you against the rocks when it proves a fickle friend? And, then, of course, why do we let these things break us? And how many times are we going to let these external things shatter us until we finally grasp that these pieces of our daily puzzles fit together only to show the world our visage and not the part of us that really matters: our soul.

I get it that not every one is a safe harbor in which to shelter and wait out our storms. Not everyone is even safe to ask directions to those harbors. But eventually you have to trust someone, be vulnerable to someone. (That is soooo not easy for me to say.) But if we have a God who loved us enough to die for us, then we also have a God who loved us enough to bring safe people into our lives to show us that even when the muse does climb out the window, when the wave smashes you into the rocks, when the storms block the harbor, we are not lost and alone. The muse will come home, you’ll live to get back on that board, and the storms will clear. That’s hope. That’s faith. And I can’t imagine it gets better or more real than that.

I have seen God move and work in my life and the lives of others in both awesomely large and infinitely small, though no less amazing, feats. I have witnessed miracles and answers to truly faithful prayer that I never would’ve imagined or even believed decades ago, and these small or great wondrous acts have fractured open my lifetimes of diamond-hardened glaze to pour shimmering molten faith to fill and seal the fissures that pervaded my broken heart and soul. These great and wondrous acts have served as the cement to fasten me in place when I was sure the funnel clouds whirling overhead would surely carry me away.   But now, well, now when I seek Him, when my heart cries out in true need and desperate faith, I hear…nothing.

“Bereft” fits my darkened soul-state today, this week, or to be fairly transparent, off and on for the past several weeks, and please understand that I do not share this lightly. I feel so very separate from what has become the absolute core of my being – my Creator – and I have heard this phase – when you cannot hear the Lord or feel His mercy – as “the dark night of the soul” as described by Theresa of Avila, but a flicker of hope burns bright as I am reminded that she also stated that He can end this separation from Him with but one word. But until then, what? What shall I use as my guideposts until His voice returns? His word when there is no Spirit communication to translate and infuse their wisdom? I certainly cannot trust my own fickle human heart.

In my rational mind I know I never walk alone, ever. I know He remains beside me, but I cannot feel Him, the One who has been my constant, the One who has carried me through the absolute worst days and years of my life. And I long for Him as I have known and experienced Him. There are days I wonder if I will survive until He reveals Himself again in ways I can clearly distinguish. I wonder at the timing of His absence; why now? For we know He does all things with a purpose, all things for our good, even if it becomes clear to us only years down the craggy paths of our lives.

Can I love without Him? Can I be merciful without Him? Show grace? Kindness? Perseverance? Faith and even joy? Maybe finding that out is the ultimate and central point. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis says, “…give yourself to Me and I will make of you a new self—in My image. Give Me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart shall become your heart.” So, maybe being left in silence – in stillness – is a further attempt to transform my heart to be more like His. In that case, the schism I feel yawning wide isn’t a schism at all but a tighter seam being gently and quietly sewn between His heart and mine. Maybe the true reality that stretches eternally yet unattainably beyond my comprehension is His deep and abiding Love and not abandonment, but, then, I never, ever have believed He’d abandoned me. After all, I am His and He is mine. My name is burnt upon His heart; whether I hear Him, whether I feel Him, whether I see Him I am always His beloved.

One absolute upon which I can rely, He will always return. “…as surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.” Hosea 6:3