on living

I often wake around 5:00. I like the quiet dark, the hot cups, the page turning, inhaled prayers, the box fan still roaring upstairs. 

This is what I call my Quiet Time, a time for which I used to throw aside my covers with a jump. When morning rolls up, God’s bigness overwhelms, and I move according to His size. Everything seems small, kept, and controlled – and not by me. I am created. I act like a believer. I love. Goodness and Mercy follow. Jesus lives.

When I first believed, it was an enviable and rapturous kind of salvation. Fibers released, and the ingrained came out. My body stopped crying after the unfastening of a child. 

I remember jealously wanting the dramatic story – the God-takeover.

And now I’m jealous again and waning in memory, my groggy head deep in feathers, my tummy full of potato chips, my imagination cornered on the dark circles under my eyes and the lusty future women banging on my boys’ doors.

Survival mode for a mother is as common as peanut butter and jelly. It’s purpose is to get us by, to keep us breathing just for today. And as we do, the seen things multiply – magnify.

And then the static comes on, which means there is no reception. When we’re in survival mode, we get confused about how to change the channel.

Scrounge for the manual. Run your finger along the boring.

Run it along until the breeze.

Recognize the order where it really is. Call yourself dead. 

It’s not survival we’re after here.

There is no energy to spend except what has already been spent.

Believe that it is finished. 

Believe in other breath.

In the beginning was the Word.

The Word was God, was with God.

This is how the lights come on,

how the dry bones dance.

Tagged as: Faith