Over My Head: When the Rains Come

Drafter’s Note: I really did write this in its entirety from my airplane seat. And part of me wants to flesh it out and another part wants to put it in perspective but the ruling voice—majority vote or bossy vocalist is hard to call—says to leave this as I wrote it, because this is why I made this space to begin with: to be who I am.

I can't say that I don't know why I'm crying, why the tears seem to be related to gravity and thus closer to my surface the higher we climb. Last night in my eighth-floor hotel room I could feel the building pressure of them just beneath the surface, shifting every image to one seen through salty water. But today as the gravity lessens and our wheels lift from the tarmac I'm more grateful than I think I've ever been for this two-seater, this window, this two hours all to myself. Because loss seems inevitable—not every day, not all the time, but in some hours it grips across the skin the way I imagine an octopus would, relentless and stinging and impossible to remove. Some days it's brief, painful but passing. 

But there are moments when I cannot see an end but the obvious—and the simultaneously unknown. These tears will not be brushed away, and though they come quietly they will not be overpowered. I don't look for their end or their cause. Up here in the open I let them coast down my cheeks, hit my chest, roll where they will. Because though we coast over neighborhoods and highways there's no one beside me, no one to search for meaning or try to understand. How could they when I myself fall short of words? When only snippets and pieces of the brokenness find their way into focus? When the raw patches draw tears from the deep for the things that, barring a miracle, will never be felt by this heart? 

I let the mess run its course. I let the tears come as they need to and don't analyze their reasons. And I lean, lean reliantly and desperately and utterly into the Holy Spirit who harmonizes with me to make something beautiful, worthwhile and worship-worthy to my Father, my Tatì, the Writer and Remaker, the King and Captain and Comforter, the One who knows what He's doing and always has my hand and never forgets or falls or fails. He has a plan that is perfect for Him, and He draws me in again and again because His Son sacrificed everything to bring me home, and the Father loves me still, loves me too much to leave me out of the story that glorifies Him in every way.

And when the story seems too much for me—when the pages look blank and the words garble in my mouth and I don't know where to set my next step—keep me leaning into You, following after You, never quitting until that day that I am Home and falling at Your feet and having nothing but Your priceless name to cry back in glory, reason, worship, end, beginning.