friends, you know her, the lady behind the poetry, the tender soul that bleeds love from The Run A Muck… she’s here with us today, amber, speaking on Jesus scribbling in the sand…
The three boys run about us, and we stay at the dinner table with our backs hunched. We look at each other droopy-eyed, and we smile side-ways. No need to say it. We’re tired.
After sleeping boys and a television show, we sludge to bed, into new sheets. Seth hypnogogically jerks. My body immediately stills. The internal hum begins to quieten.
Only a few thoughts spin on their wheels: I think myself genius for noticing inconsistencies in a plot, think of flowers at the rock house, how much I’ve eaten today, a song. Then right as I gently edge at the tip of sleep, right as the thoughts grow wings and leap off the wheel, they wake me. Her painful words, the memory list of things that I’ve chopped up and pushed to the corners, they gather again like Terminator metal and turn into hot breathing flesh.
My blood flows, spinning the wheel, the fear of not being loved.
All night I sleep running.
Many mornings I stay in bed late because I don’t find sleep until sun threatens sky. I don’t get up until boys beg cereal. My time in the morning to meditate on scripture is swallowed up this way.
But this morning, I cursed the motorcycle that cranked at 5 AM, and I got up to pour tea on my wild exhaustion.
I lock eyes with the book of John and I’m so glad Jesus has come alive for me, His words rising off the page. I moan inside to Him, my hurt.
My unrest. My wrestle. My rights, they are none.
His forgiveness, His writing words in the sand next to the adulterous lady thrown there. His Words, they raise me, from the ground at any man’s feet. I serve no other word, but His.
And mind wanders off, half in prayer, half in deep daze, and I think of my weekly battle at church, the desire to raise my hands, how I never do but desperately crave to reach for Him.
I read, “From [her] innermost being will flow rivers of living water, [referring to] the Spirit, whom those who believed were to receive” (John 7:38-39). And I know I’ve received it, but I’m sure on mornings like today’s that I’ve dammed the river deep and silent within.
The dam of unforgiveness, I don’t know how to knock it down,
but my arms they reach straight up; my arms and hands like siphon, I reach. Rivers of Living Water, I beg. If any is thirsty, it’s me now. Dry when it should be flood season.
Give me drink, like Spirit peeling from Heaven into the mouths of graves. Like Life into Raised Stone Woman Heart.
Only by the power of the river will the dam break, the wheels cease, my soul find its true rest. My heart pumps of flesh. What He spilled, it never stops flowing.
(still making my way through your imperfect prose… thank you, friends, for your words…)