The Grass

Say to my soul,
"I am your salvation."
Psalm 35:3b

There was a night not long ago when what I wanted was lost, and my heart dropped from my chest like a jumper from a high rise. I went into the bathroom, closed the door, knelt on the bath mat and cried quietly so that I wouldn't be heard. And then, I did what mothers have done for years, which was to powder around my eyes, open the door and take my daughter to her swimming lessons. God, I know, plays by her own set of rules.

That night I slept in broken blocks of time with the failure pressing so hard against my head that I thought my skull would crack, that I would split right there in the bed and they would find me in the morning with my liquid brains pooled on the pillow beside me.

Fear, as always, slipped in the cracks. It blew its rancid breath into my mouth and I sucked it down deep. Swallowed every word it fed me, so that I lay there, body bloated with failure and shame, tucked in tight under that thick hopelessness. And there was this: A vision of myself lying curled in a field of dead and yellow grass. And of even that sharp straw accusing me. Even the grass mocking. And the sky was heavy with hate.

Until: All at once? In a puff of smoke? Suddenly?
God was there.

A holy ghost hovering, and me as empty as the space between things.

I do not pretend to understand how love becomes enough. But it does. Did. Some things will only live outside language.

She held close the empty space the way oil loves the face of the water, clings and curves to its movings.
And there was nothing to become, to be done, to attain. Only the loving.

And my eyes following the words, "You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice; your bones shall flourish like the grass."

Enough.