Over My Head: This Morning

Drafter's Note: This was a prayer journal entry at 4:00am, a Facebook post at 5:30am, and is now shared here with minimal editing: a busy day for these little words. I wobbled on going public to this degree--brave faces are so tempting--but summarizing on social media didn't do it for me. I find myself wondering if this is a small way of speaking out, acknowledging brokenness and unglossed truth, in the face of the devastating and unbelievable in the world. 

Or maybe I'm just crazy.


Here I am, awake again--comfortably enough, with the rain pattering heavily and a little cold lo mein and the knowledge of a day of nothing set out before me.* No pressure to stay awake or rush back to sleep--I can hover in this limbo. Why not.

I can feel the little losses this morning--or maybe I'm just looking at them more head-on, acknowledging them more than usual. Nothing big. Just the pieces that aren't there: plots of books I've too-recently read, details of movies I think I love, names to match with new faces, lost lyrics to songs I can only rhythmically hum. And these are the pieces I notice missing. Are there larger holes, hard to see at a distance but gaping wide, ready to swallow more, gravitational black holes in my memory?

I don't know.

It feels that way sometimes.

But, to be fair, I've always had this melancholic strand woven through me, coming to the surface sporadically. Maybe these little lost pieces harmonize with the near-waltzy sway of melancholia to see those holes where there is, in fact, only good plowable ground. (I pull my dictionary app out here, and I stay with that word not for its first definition of mournful depression but for "sober thoughtfulness"--medievally, a bit too much black bile, which strikes the right note for me in here.**)

So this, too, like joys and dreams and supposed promises, I hold in open hands for You to take--or not.

And the image that comes--from You or me, I'm not sure--is You closing my fingers, letting me hold it while Your hands remain, holding mine. Sobering. Thoughtful.

(In these moments, it is simple to me how those in this legacy who chose a Saviorless life reached instead for a bottle: a supposed steadier for these waves and wobbles.)

So I'll sit here with You, Savior of mine. And together we will own this: the real and the imagined, the solid fact and the melancholic fog. You won't leave and I won't give up. You'll hold my hand until I fall asleep: each time, and then the last time, when you'll raise me out of the bile and into breaking, remaking, transforming light.

For now, in this time of imperfection, we see in a mirror dimly, 

we see a blurred reflection, a riddle, an enigma. 

But then, when the time of perfection comes, we will see reality face to face. 

Now I know in part, just in fragments, but then I will know fully, 
just as I have been fully known by God.

- 1 Corinthians 13:12, Amplified version 

(parentheses and brackets switched out for natural punctuation)

* Amazing how today ended up--almost like Someone was penning a better story. That "day of nothing" became an early morning of worship and quiet and peace; a later morning of service and great conversations with fellow churchgoers and strangers as we volunteered cleaning our neighbors' homes; an afternoon of great conversation and beautiful walk with a new friend; and later tonight, a game night with friends and other strangers. Prayerfully I'll remain conscious for everything. 

** "Melancholy," according to my dictionary app (combining some definitions but remaining true to order): 
          1) a gloomy state of mind; mournful; depressed; 
          2) sober thoughtfulness; pensiveness; 
          3) Archaic. the condition of having too much black bile. 
          Origin: 1275-1325 Middle English melancholie: condition of having black bile.