As a result my identity was impacted severely.
I lost everything about who I felt I was, completely. That is how it felt anyway. And it silenced me. It silenced my capacity to worship with my voice in song, and my capacity to pray with words in prayer. The silence became my song.
But, He did not stop singing over me.
I realized just this past year, after coming out of that a coma about a year ago, that there are certain words or maybe I should say, truths - that until coming out of that a coma I could not receive. Therefore, could not hear.
I have recently begun re-reading a book I have already, read. Matter of fact it is by an author of which I have read almost all his books he has written. And, it will be a matter of time before I read the few I have not yet read.
The book--- The Divine Embrace, Ken Gire. When I read this, I remember it being very moving for me. But, at the time when I read this, I also was thick into the treacherous road of uncovering other truths. And the truths in this book, did not hit me the way I know my Beloved would have wanted them to. I was too wounded to hear such words. Too broken and ravaged to receive such beautiful language.
Tonight, I am reading. And tonight, these words are sinking in. Well, I think they are anyway. More than they did ten years ago. And I suppose, they will need to sink in much more deeply than they are tonight. That is my prayer, anyway.
I am going to quote some of the places along this dance of words that Ken writes about, that have wooed me, have gripped me, and have humbled and invited me, more intimately and honestly into the dance He is reaching His hand out to me, to embrace. The dance He, My Beloved Jesus, has always been reaching to me to embrace. Let me begin by quoting from Ken's words- of which all my quotes from him will be in brown:
"As incredible as it seems, there is a place over the rainbow where troubles melt like lemon drops, where the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.
But until the day when we go to that place or the day when Jesus returns to take us there, we must live our lives under the rainbow...where the road ahead is not paved with yellow bricks. Sometimes it has no bricks at all, only the sharp-edged remains of our shattered dreams."
When I read this I completely lost it. It has not only been my road up until I went into a coma, but in many ways, it has remained my road. The sharp-edged places both of experience and of the debris left behind. The chapter goes on to end this way...
"What we find under the rainbow is not an easier road to travel but traveling mercies for the road, however long or hard it may be.
One of those mercies is that along the way we are given glimpses of the one we now love only from afar. Something happens to us in those moments. A shift in focus. We find that our eyes are no longer on the steepness of the road or the sharpness of the rocks beneath our feet but on him who has gone before us...
....our hearts begin to ache. ....because of that moment we love him more. ....we discover where the Lord of the Dance has been leading us all along---into a deeper love for him. ....and when that happens, the beating of his heart and the beating of ours become one."
During my a coma, He felt both far and near. Far in helping me to understand... near in that, I somehow knew He was so very close. He told me so. He told me, "I'm not going anywhere." He spoke to me those very words, letting me know that the chair sitting by my bed as I was deep into a place no one could reach... He did.
My heart began to ache. It ached for a long time. And to be honest it still aches. But for different reasons, and in a different way. Then, it ached for the pain... now it aches for pain to, but not without hope. Not without longing. It's more intense, the ache now. And I do love Him more. Much more. Or maybe, I'm just able to express that love more now. I'm not sure... but part of His traveling mercy for me was sustaining my love for Him. Increasing my love for Him. All while He sat with me and I laid unconscious of that love. To a big degree, anyway. Somehow the beating of my heart.... has come through stronger. Perhaps because He is teaching me how to become one with Him.
As I turned the page, I was led to the still point of the dance. Five years after entering that a coma, I became a mommy. Any still point I had...went right out the window for the first few years. Performing and maintaining duty .... killed me. Killed my still point. My pause with Him. Of which for me have always needed to be, quite long. It has always taken me a long time to, what do they call it, 'decompress.' And so as I got to this chapter I was again struck by the pondering it prodded in me. Ken quotes Henri Nouwen from his book titled, "Reaching Out."
"Being useless and silent in the presence of our God belongs to the core of all prayer. In the beginning we often hear our own unruly inner noises more loudly than God's voice. This is at times very hard to tolerate. But slowly, very slowly, we discover that the silent time makes us quiet and deepens our awareness of ourselves and God. Then, very soon, we start missing these moments when we are deprived of them, and before we are fully aware of it an inner momentum has developed that draws us more and more into silence and closer to that still point where God speaks to us."
I had become useless!
I had lost all sense of being able to maintain my sense of routine because I had been given a routine that was determined by someone else than me. I was after all a mommy and that meant that I had to sacrifice my routine for the sake of my little boy. I then found out he had Sensory Processing Disorder. That explained, finally, much of the challenges that no other moms seemed to be having, but made me feel like I was really missing the mark at this 'mom thing.' How was it that I could talk to mom's that had 4+ children and they felt that 'having one or having four,' is no different.
I felt so much of the time a failure to this mom thing.
But, I cherished every part of it....and at the same time, feared it.
Feared not being able to handle it. Do it right. As I read this quote, in light of the still point of time with God in my life, I was at a still point in my reading. Can I just say that the very first sentence of this quote COMPLETELY AFFIRMED MY PATTERN OF TIME WITH GOD FOR THE FIRST 4 1/2 YEARS OF MOTHERHOOD!!! I can't tell you how much that blessed me, thrilled me, touched me...and led me again to tears. For a heart that is bent and wired for long periods of time with her Beloved.... even in silence,... to hear that in the midst of duty and staying ahead as a mom, I was undone. And I hardly heard anything but the guilt playing in my head as I would sit in the darkened room late at night while the sink of dishes silently called me to wash them, or the laundry sat waiting for my fingers to fold them, I couldn't!
I just wanted to sit in the presence of Him even if I couldn't make out the words clamoring between the guilt of not getting it "all done!"
Night after night for so long I would sit feeling useless and silent before Him. While at the same time that silence was swimming with prayers that were too deep for words. They, my prayers, came in tears. Tears and tears and more tears. The one language I was really quite done with, but the only language that never seemed to ... stop coming. This was 'very hard to tolerate'. For me. But can I tell you that, it's so true what he writes, Nouwen, it does deepen us. Our awareness. Of our self and God. It did for me. It was in those very places He spoke again, and invited me to dance with Him as His daughter. I had not known such a dance. He was giving me back my identity. And everything in that paragraph I quote above, is exactly what happened for me. Every. Word. Of. It. Happened. For. Me. But it came through my.... still point. My intentional pauses, my intentional choice of saying no to the 'busyness.' And yes to the stillness. Even if that stillness for me was seemingly useless and pointless. He found me.
And I found Him... intimately.
Listen, from the movie, "Les Mis'erables."
" I don't understand why you are being so kind." she says, speaking through her bloodied mouth and looking up at him with her sunken eyes.
"You need to rest," he says.
I needed rest. And I didn't know exactly how to find it. But I wasn't going to go any more without it.
"Love changes us in ways that law cannot. Spiritual formation, a term used to describe the process of being changed into the image of Christ, doesn't happen by following disciplines. It happens by falling in love.
....everything in life find its proper value once we have properly valued him. We take time for what we value. And we behold what we love. It is not the duty of beholding that changes us, though, but rather the beauty of the one we behold.
...busyness is lethal---it keeps us from beholding the face of Jesus. And that is why the stillness is essential---to get the best possible look at his face, for the longest possible time.
Beholding Christ's face is the still point of the dance, around which all our activity should revolve.
If that is not the still point in our lives, there is no dance.
There is only movement."
The a coma in many ways was a gift to leading me right into the very still place He longed for me to go. To get to.
The end of myself. The end of thinking that I could get it all done and not miss a thing. But, I was missing the very thing, the One Thing that meant most to me... even if it was washed by tears.
That moment with Him. Each. Day.
Learning, the hard way even...that very real and humbling truth that beholding His face is where all of His intimacy takes place in our lives. As well as all transformation. Perhaps that is why as I read through several chapters later into the book and came to this ... that my heart was again, stilled in it's reading. I showed it to my husband. I highlighted it. I posted it on facebook. I posted it on my heart. And it is this. And it speaks into the very realm of which He is teaching me this very moment.
"God had indeed been silent. But silent in the way an artist at work is silent. He had been quietly at work in me, forming Christ in me.
We are told in the Scriptures that one day we will be "like Him" (1 John 3:2). ....If this is true, we are works in progress on our way to becoming masterpieces. However rough the sketch appears, a painting of incomparable beauty is emerging from it."
When He is working, as an artist...there are those moments where silence does its best work, formation. And maybe that is what He was wanting me to see all along those nights, and secret times while in a coma I didn't hear a word from Him. I only knew He was sitting right there. He somehow knew what I needed to hear, when I would be able to hear. In a coma.... it is said you can hear. But you can't respond. And that you are in such a deep place of sub-consciousness. But never too deep for the work of the master artist who is in the business of making masterpieces.
I am humbled into a place of stillness, to consider I might ever be like Him. But, those are His words. And it is His work.
May I sit still long enough. Long enough that my gaze would be caught by His- extending His hand to mine. Where I follow. Where I behold Him. Where I dance.
My deepest gratitude and honor, to Ken Gire. His humility. His vulnerability to his own brokenness. I am forever grateful that the Father in Heaven, allowed Ken's writings to be written across decades of my life, for without those words having been written, I know that I would not have survived. They were the very traveling mercies through which The Kingdom of God, came to my soul... for when I read the work of Ken, the artistry of his words... they lead me right into the Word of God, they allow me to fall more deeply in love with not only His Holy Word, but with insight and a taste of The Beloved Jesus Christ, in a way I never had before. Thank you, my friend, for the comfort of such traveling mercy. For each one of your writings--- led me through the roads beneath the rainbow, while reminding me one day, I will live above the rainbow.
