How else does a pile of bones become a pile of bones?
I died a million deaths. Each too small for me to recognize. Unbeknown to me the path was a slippery slope, to all else it looked beautiful. Trajectory looked set... GenX couple, gifts, talents, favor... Perfect package. So incredibly wrapped and decorated with the perfect bow. Ready! Set! Success!
I died a million deaths before I realized I had ceased to breathe. I had held my breath for far too long and had lost not just the lyrics but the entire melody to the song, that had been placed within me before the foundation of the world.
I had died a million deaths and peered out of lifeless eyes, played too many parts ... all thinking I was serving You.
I died a million deaths but a death would come whose sting I didn't back away from, whose victory wrecked havoc... flat lined... deceased... decomposing... pile of dry bones.
I touched pain and sorrow, loneliness and fear and I let them touch me, clothe me and pass through me .. It was the day the first sinew was put back upon my skeleton. It was the moments when my lungs would be touched and breath would be put back into them. It was the moment where the remembrance of my song didn't depend upon my own strength to be sung. It was the moment where I let silence and space and darkness hover and encompass me and in that valley kept my eyes open though I could see nothing. It was as Holy Spirit hovering over immense chaos right before the moments where Creator sung from the depths of eternity the most majestic four words ever spoken, "Let there be light."
I ran from pain. I hid from fear. I would see it coming from over a mile away and I would run the opposite direction. Or if it caught up with me I became a master at learning how to disappear. I cowered before loss, I trembled before loneliness, I crumbled before men.
When loss screeches forth its eeriest cries and robs the soul of that which was once precious one flat lines. What one does next that becomes the story.
Tonight I have wept.
Different tears.
Tonight I have stood exceedingly vast.
I didn't realize how I had stopped running. I didn't realize that I turned and faced the darkness. Liken unto the moments that preceded the million small deaths, and the one true flat line; I didn't know what I was doing when I turned to face it all.
There are so many fancy ways to negate death in the Western world. We dress our corpses up pretty and we go buy more things, distraction lives in every nook and cranny, noise and sound keep our hearts occupied so that we forget what breathing sounds like. And when pain raised its head I became the expert at anesthetizing.
What we don't know about death is killing us...
Touch the pain, let the nails be beaten into flesh, let the thorns pierce the scalp, let the splinters rip open the heart and the spear penetrate the side.... let the death come.. It will come anyway, whether it is wanted or not.... That is just part of the story.
There are experiences that alter the course of a life. In moments recently past I lifted my eyes up and saw how the truth is I died a million deaths for some of the most ridiculous reasons that were never ridiculous at the time, I suffocated myself, I bent myself backwards and tied myself in knots..... But what I have learned recently is that you can release the bind and let oxygen and blood come rushing back in.... I have seen how instead of running the other way, one can stop and pause and breathe.
It is upon the moments, where the howling of the night terrors press in upon the glass, that I have learned to sit in the dark and listen to the noises and sit and feel the trembling of the window panes and the rumbling of the atmosphere and my own heart, and I have learned to sit and I have learned that it all passes. It all passes. The storm passes. The loss passes. The fear passes. It all passes. That which I was so filled with terror over I have watched dissipate as I have sat and watched the first rays of morning sunshine erupt into a rainbow.
It is His promise to the pile of dry bones... It is His promise that we will walk again with breathe poured back into us; knowing and standing and be exceedingly great......
Thank you, Mims for sharing your journey into freedom.
ReplyDeleteResurrection might be promised to the dead, but too many of us walk this earth, each bearing their own cross of fear and pain, not knowing that they can put it down anytime.
As you so beautifully point out, Resurrection can be in our reach in our lifetime, We can bring life into our lives. We can face the fear, own our pain and start living happily and freely. Here. Now. Always!
I'm sure that we were not meant to suffer, but rather find happiness through the pain. If we trust that the sun is always shinning over the clouds, we know that we can get through the pain into freedom of the spirit.