Listening

Standing in the line, at the door of church. A normal Sunday, though nothing feels normal anymore.

No ceremonies for this, though I am the one who needs them, who understands them. No protocol, no Hallmark card, no pattern, no expressions.

Some say nothing. Hello…

Most in this line, and in the many other places where I must re-renter what is supposed to be reality, offer prayers, and tears, and that is enough, and more than enough.

And a few enter in.

She stops and embraces me, her hair so close it tangles in mine. “When there are no words, there are no words,” she says, with words that say so much.

Once I broke a sugar bowl, a special blue dish. It cracked completely in half, but Bill said he could fix it. In a lingering family joke, he used the wrong remedy – super glue remover - and didn't realize his mistake. He held the bowl together, proudly showing me how it was like new. But when he let it go on the counter, it was divided apart again.

That is me. I am split apart, broken entirely. And I am held together tightly by the One who loves me, and loves her. And by the One who can fix this. I am still broken, completely. Both are so true. The pain and brokenness, the being held together.

At night I sit alone in the deep darkness, the old dog breathing at my feet. I listen, carefully, quietly, for His voice. He has heard mine, and continues to hear mine, over and over and over and over and over. Didn’t He say ‘ask, and keep on asking’? I keep on. He will never say of me ‘I wasn’t sure what you wanted.’ He knows. He continues to know. I ask, and I continue to ask.

I have walked with this One for a half century. I have heard more messages – in pulpits and churches, in kitchens and living rooms, in classrooms and out in beautiful and in broken places – than I can count. I have His words in my heart, I have sought His way and His paths. I have known His healing, His touch, and His deep, abiding comfort. I have followed Jesus.

And now I am broken. I am held together, but sometimes I squirm away, until I am agonized by a thought, a memory, with pain so intense it makes it hard to breathe. And then I feel the arms again, wrapping me tightly, each broken part pressed once more against the other.

In the night, I listen. I listen through page after page. I listen carefully, not waiting for the words I want, the words I know I can find and make fit. I want His words, His voice.

I sit alone and remember, and can feel her in my arms again, and I close my eyes and pray those short, desperate prayers that ask for a sound mind, and for help in the time of trouble – for me, for my daughter, for my granddaughter, for my loved ones.

And in the midst of it all, I pray for the one an ocean away, the one who lives in a house of cement, the one who has nothing - literally nothing - but the dream of a family, and a piece of paper from a court that says we belong to each other.

A passport rests among the words from God. And when I hear ‘this thing is from Me,’ I sense it means this news of the need to travel, though it is beyond my understanding how I can leave this broken family, now, and go so far.

I ask for a miracle for her, for him, for us. It’s a foolish request, in a world that is solid and logical and moving forward, each day harder. But I still ask, and keep on asking. And I listen, straining to hear His voice, His response...wanting to know unmistakably that it’s His.

And in the quiet, He speaks His words through others. The One who was made flesh, who is Emmanuel, God with us, puts His words in the mouths and the pens and the keyboards of others.

I hear them now. From somewhere in the middle of the country, she whispers prayer with me, “Lord, have mercy.” From across wide-open Texas lands, she softly tells me, “Rock in the cradle of His grace.” From one whose home is missing the child whose one hundred days of life were way too short, and all too recent, there is a promise that He will be with me. From the one across town who has brought meals, hugs, tears, and love, I hear words of faith and a reminder of the One who does not fail. And from brand-new friends, those who know what it is to walk through the fire and through the flood, and who do it for unknown and unseen children who will become their own, there are prayers prayed with us, one line at a time. All this, and more. Overwhelming.

Each night, too, there is the benediction, e-mailed back and forth between my mother and her now grown-up child, as we share our tears, our prayers, our agonies, and our hopes, for our little girl who was made a mommy for almost eighteen months, and for her precious little girl.

We pray miracles. We pray mercy. And we walk carefully through this valley of the shadow, and listen, how we listen, to hear the voice of the Lord.