November 2017
The mists rise from the stream, creeping up and rising into a chill fog. The westering sun hides behind a cloud, and every color is muted. The temperature drops.
And I, seated in my corner of the mountain enclave, wrapped in blankets, cannot be still inside. “I’m better now, I can get up and move around without pain: therefore I ought to be doing something! What am I doing here?” Yet I don’t want to do anything. The old apathy is back upon me, coating every desire in an impenetrable listless feeling. Well, maybe I do want to do something—I want to make myself feel better! Coffee works, occasionally, but I don’t like to depend on it, because it’s not a real, lasting, “feel better”.
The fog continues to rise and thicken; the far bank and glade are gradually lost to vision.
“What am I doing with my life? Oughtn’t I to be out and doing something like everybody else my age—and younger? Shouldn’t I at least appear to be productive and busy instead of sitting here? Why am I so slow at everything?!” I grab for a bit of mending at my side and begin to work at it, jabbing the needle in and out impatiently. I am forcing myself to do this out of guilt, but not because I want to.
It’s cold. The daylight is fading. I toss the mending aside and stand up to get some warm food and tea, then return to my little spot. I began to eat and drink mechanically without tasting of it. “If I didn’t have to eat I wouldn’t. So inconvenient!” I grumble to myself.
I think back to the summer…it was so strange, my summer. I still don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know how to describe it. The memories are turned bitter.
With a sigh I turn to my table and take up the sheets of paper I have tried to record my journeyings on. Skipping over the enigma of the summer, I pause at the section right after the trip to England and before the Halloween Forest: I had been in a small cave, which turned out to be and ante chamber. I felt like callouses on my soul had been softened by being away from the daily friction, and I could hear and feel more acutely. One night soon after returning, coming together to the sound of music, all the verses and themes from my year were touched on in succession. I felt that that was a sign, and that there must be a message for me. And then I had seen a picture in my mind, and afterward scratched out on a bit of paper what I titled, “A Quiet Place”, describing what happened after England.
I am in a quiet place.
I cannot begin to describe it where I am now, I only know that it is The Present, and it is rather dim and dark. It is, as I said, a quiet place. The unruly mists of anxiety and bothersome happenings swirl all about, trying to confuse me and take away the peace. They needn’t succeed so often as they do, but at least they are not strong enough to actually remove me from this place of Presence—not yet.
They talked about ‘Calling’ tonight, which was also the conference theme in England. They quoted “Come unto me, all you who are weak and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” During a song called “I Am”, I saw myself in the Hall of Memories, where I had danced, but had also looked up at the walls and shouted “Where are you?!” a dozen times and more over the months. I saw myself go through the doorway to the Room of Tomorrow with the shock of an Earthquake (that one Sunday—I’ll explain someday). I saw myself in the Room of Tomorrow—but it was now the Room of Today—fretting and trying to focus and be present in each moment, but glancing frantically around at the drab walls and ceiling, wondering what I was missing. People were all around—but they were there, yet not there. They were more like ghosts—shadows. I couldn’t speak to them. I longed to, but felt powerless to try. Yet a few points of contact were made, when God gave them. The stress overflowed into tears and I cried and fretted alternately. After each storm of tears I felt a step closer to reality. In each step forward I called and searched for You. You said to me, “I am right here. Ssshhh, be still now.” Yet I couldn’t see nor feel You.
As through a whirling time vortex I saw this picture of my summer, and at the end of it You were standing, arms outstretched, calling. Calling my name: “Diligence.” And as the song around me swelled to its climax, you were saying, “I am here”, and folded me into your embrace. I could feel you again…”
“And I knew I was loved.” My thoughts carried on the narrative as the writing came to an end on the paper. “He then put His hands on my shoulders, faced me around forward and said in my ear, ‘Now go and bear fruit. Be faithful right where you are.’
“After that, I took a step forward, and the small ante-chamber opened into a grand room. The mists cleared, the daylight sifted in—and suddenly I gasped and clapped my hand to my mouth. I could see at last! This was a holy place, a chapel—an Underground Cathedral! The walls and ceiling all carved with intricate and beautiful detail. Such joy filled my soul, and a sense of renewed purpose. I don’t remember if I danced then, but I turned back to look at Him standing behind me, and so much love for him filled my heart such as I hadn’t felt before…
”—And then”, I thought bitterly, throwing down the papers, “When I turned forward again it seemed the lovely chapel was gone. And it was dark. And as I kept trying to take steps forward I found myself in that miserable, dark, Halloween forest.”
I sat with my teacup clenched in my hand, the tea cold and forgotten as I stared ahead without seeing. The mists thickened, drifting in closer toward me, into the enclave. The cold quietly, gradually crept close and touched me, and then clamped onto my bones. And I could not move. The mists also wafted near, and began to blur my vision, getting into my head. “Everything is meaningless”, they whisper.
“Oh, Silly, silly me!” The thoughts in my mind tumble agitatedly, “How foolish and silly it was to pretend my life could be like a fairy tale. How embarrassing. I’m glad I didn’t tell people about it. Who even am I? I can’t do anything. I can’t succeed. I can’t even try.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” Cries my heart, directing its cry outward in hopes that Someone might hear, “I can’t move. I am full of complaint. I have no strength. Why is the memory of drinking eclipsed by the thirsting? Replace the complaining with something—this can’t be right!” I catch hold onto a straw of a phrase and start repeating it over and over:
Hear me, O Lord, for thy lovingkindness is good. Turn unto me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies. And hide not thy face from thy servant, for I am in trouble; hear me speedily. Draw nigh unto my soul, and redeem it. Deliver me because of my enemies. For thou hast known my shame, and my reproach, and my dishonor; all mine adversaries are before thee. And I looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none… (Ps. 69:16-20)
I can see myself huddled there, wrapped in a blanket, but also wrapped in dimming light and mist and cold, my hands still clutching the chilled teacup, my glazed eyes staring out into nothing, unable to rest, struggling inside as the last vestiges of the sunset faded from the clouds in the distant west.
“Find me. Find me!” I finally manage to croak out, as if in a dream.
~~
I jerk awake with a cry. It is night. A warm hand is on my shoulder. I spin around, and there He is. Oh, there He is! I collapse into His arms, sobbing and delighted and comforted all at once. “It’s you! You’re here! You’re really here!” Is all I can manage to cry amid tears.
He helps me stand and we walk out of the enclave and down across the stream to the clearing in front of the glade of trees. And He tells me things, things I longed to hear…that it’s ok that I’m slow, that He loves that I want to be with Him… “And He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own! And the joy we share as we tarry there none other has ever known.”
And as we walk out there in the glade on that Autumn night, the clouds part and a shaft of bright moonlight gleams down upon us, turning the whole night scene into silver and glass and crystal. The few remaining leaves on the trees glimmer and glint in the pale light as the breeze moves them with a rustle. The stream sparkles and shines as it continues to murmur along. All is right with the world again.
Threads of Truth: 