A Prayer

I have been found wandering again, slipping off the edge. My heart clings to the cliff side while my mind wonders, “why so much fear? Why so much pain?”. When I leave your side it is no longer simple boredom I face or stumbling feet; I face a broken heart, pulled from the IV of pain meds that you were administering. I feel the full force of this world and have no answer for the hope so obviously needed. You are the Hope.  You are the only one who can save us. Oh Jesus, the words of the hymn come crashing in and are screaming in my head as I run to you, “BIND MY WANDERING HEART TO THEE LORD, BIND MY WANDERING HEART TO THEE!”. Oh would you please. Tear up these rags that I wear and use them as a chord, wrap them around my ribs and around yours, lay your ribs against mine, bind my heart to yours. Your heart is the only salve for my aching soul, for this thumping tired muscle in my chest.  And once we are bound Lord Jesus wrap your arms around too. Let the blood from your hands run down my back and cool it, calm it. And carry me Lord Jesus, carry me to the end. I am running this race and my feet have gathered broken glass and burrs, I reach for the finish line where you and my father stand waiting …. But the finish line is still out of view and I’m afraid. I’m afraid of running into more glass, more coals and harsh winds that will blow against my already weary soul. I am terrified that your good good plan includes two dead baby girls ….. and it may. It wouldn’t be the first time that your plan for the good of a heart included boundless grief and pain. I am no exception, I am not exempt  from your blessings of wisdom through trail…. No one is. I think this is why I wander. I wander because I hope that there is some mindless place away from you where I don’t have to be brave, where I don’t have to face the death and the real possibilities. If it wouldn’t cause sure harm to the babies that I carry in my womb I would have tried drunkenness by now. Oh how I would love to let my mind sink into a sea of liquid spirits, let it float me away from thought, away from any pain, let it numb my heart and my mind. The sweet and piercing taste, rolling on my tongue and soaking into my brain. You have kept me from this form of death, kept me from hurting everyone around me who is already hurting. Lord you are good. You hem me in. You seek out this lamb that has entered a dark place. So now while I hang here on this cliff will you pull me up yet again? Please pull me back to your side and bind, Lord bind my wandering heart to thee.

Petals of gold at the brewery

These waters, they stir me.  Across from Thunder Island I stand remembering. As the water boils below so does my memory, full of clips of my father. His hands teaching me to tie on bait. “twist it five times at least before you pull the tail through, then pull it tight in your teeth”. His fingers were stubby and without a spot  uncalloused. He trimmed his nails by sliding his pocket knife over the edges, shaving off the overhang. He was a craftsman, a artist in wood. I see us in my childhood, two silhouettes on a boat, setting the sun on our backs, casting the waters by. On the dark morning drives out to fishing up near the locks I would pretend to be asleep and listen to him sing along with Alan Jackson and whistle the words he didn’t know. Most people who know my family assume that I get my singing voice from my mom but they have just never heard my dad sing.  He had a beautiful  cowboy voice.  When I was nine I called into the local country radio station and dedicated a song to my dad, “I shoulda been a cowboy”. The truth was that what my dad shared in common with cowboys was really only the boots he wore but in my nine year old mind cowboys were heroes, standing for protection of their families, providing for them through sweat and blood,  sacrificing for moral gain, he was that kind of cowboy.  Give you the shirt off his back kind of man and oh how I loved him. I loved him in the way that all daughters hope to get to love their daddies. The kind where every ounce of affection that spills out from the little girl is returned in full and with gains from a man who calls her beautiful and smart and who disciplines scattering wisdom in her heart, who tells her just how proud and why, who teaches her about his own love for Jesus not requiring that she does the same but offers it as a shining road that she alone must choose to take or to not. I grasp at these memories of him, I  flounder for them like they are flower petals draining with the bath water, running down the drain, the recession quickening and swirling out of my grasp as the waters lower. When the water is gone only a few petals will remain clinging to the sides of my memory. So I scribble fast these memories of gold hoping they can be pressed between pages, dried for future looking and handling. Even though they will be old and cracked and barely resemble the supple life filled things they were before, I will still have them and they are so very dear to me, these petals of gold.