The Shadow of Your Wings

I've finished my spring cleaning!  I am ever and always amazed at how much dust and stuff can accumulate over the course of a few short months.  (From the pre-holiday company's a'comin' clean up to this wash the windows and clear the bookshelves [dusting not only shelves but each book - 331.  I counted.] type of work.)  It usually takes about a week to do a "right and proper" job of it, and no doubt by the end of the week the rooms dusted first are ready to be done again.  But for a day or two I sit quietly, contentedly relishing a "clean" house.  I mean really, what is a light sprinkling of dust compared to the monster globs you sucked out from behind the dresser?  I can live with it.

This morning, as I nestle into my cozy chair, secure in the knowledge that nary a creepy nor a crumb remains settled in the cushion beneath me, I pull my freshly showered feet up, take a sweetened sip of Earl Grey poured from a perfectly bleached clean china pot, savoring the scent and sense of clean.  Just as I become comfy, a sigh of "ahhh" rising with the steam of my cup, I am struck by a rather sobering thought.

When was the last time I pulled the curtains off the rods of my soul, pushed open the windows and invited the Merry Maid of God (sorry) to come in and deep clean me?  Is two or three times a year really sufficient to keep the grime and gunk out?  And, while I may be OK with a thin dusting of worldly pollen, is HE?

A joke in my childhood family was my dad's obsession with dust ... not that he would actually grab a rag and deal with it, thinking I suppose that wife and daughters were responsible for that sort of stuff, but he would write the date in the powdery film on a table top.  Not where anyone would notice, mind you.  No, he'd hide his "notes" behind a plant or an artfully arranged stack of books, then wait to see how long it took for someone to find it.  (Being the less than perfect child I would, when called upon to do the chore, dust around his not so subtle hint.  Rebellion, I know.)

So, what not so subtle hints has Father written in the dust of my spirit?

Oh man, and I thought spring cleaning was done!

The sandhill cranes are on the wing!  I can't yet see them, but their unmistakable purring crow is echoing over hill and holler.  These harbingers of the season have blessed me with the sure sign of coming spring or fall all the years we've lived here - until Katrina hit.  That year and the spring that followed we neither heard nor saw them.  I suppose the tempest had veered the ancient flight patterns.  The cranes are just beginning to return.  Their numbers are fewer, the route they take a little off-center, but the promise of the greening is sounding once again in our little world - the breezes are shifting.  I am ready.  So ready.

Our winter weather has been extremely mild this year, but a long, icy season has held my heart in its grip.  Cold to the marrow of my being.  I have wondered often during this spell at the storms that have pounded the shores of my life.  In the past five years we have weathered the deaths of my mother, a dear pet, a friend, my husband's brother, our beloved grandchild, another friend, my young niece's husband, another friend, yet another ... These we buried and grieved.  Our house has been battered and shaken, but because, and only because it is built upon the Rock it withstood the onslaught.

The gusts billowed on as relationships began to fall apart, knocked off their piers by stiff, unyielding winds of indifference.  In many ways it seems these too have "passed on," and I grieve the loss of them as well.  Too many deaths.  Too much sorrow.  I am left feeling alone and empty, desperate for a gentle current, the breath of God, to blow Life into me, upon me, around me.  Surround me, O my God.

Yesterday I caught the first stirring of an otherly breeze. I held my new grandson, Andrea's little brother, and felt, physically felt the winds within my heart begin to turn - warm, tender, loving.  I wept.

Today, hearing these magnificent birds winging so near it seems as if the croon of God Himself is echoing across the storm ravaged valleys of my soul - "I AM coming."  "I AM here."  I cannot yet see Him but just knowing He is near, that the wind is shifting, gives me hope.

Blow, Beloved Spirit, blow ...

Pinned to a bulletin board above my desk is a greeting card.  The picture on the front is of Jesus, sitting on an outcropping of rock, the sun setting at His back, shepherd's staff in hand, a ram and ewe grazing at His feet. 

Every time I glance at this rendering I am reminded that my Lord is "the Shepherd and Guardian of our souls." (1 Pe 2:25)  I know it is only an artistic   idea(l) of Jesus as our Shepherd, but it comforts me.

Just over 3 years ago, as my dear and darling grandchild lay dying this verse became my mantra.  Praying for her healing, trusting God to deliver her (and us) from the pangs of death I had a sudden shift of prayerfulness.  No longer did I focus on her sweet flesh of being, but became intensely aware of her "psuche."  The "who" of her.  Our darling had suffered severe brain injury that required removal of a significantly large portion of brain matter because of trauma.  Still I hoped and prayed that the Lord would restore her to us. 

On the ninth day of our struggle the Lord impressed this verse (1Peter) on my heart, speaking to me of her real "being," of her "psuche" (translated "life" or "soul" in scripture), of "the Who of her."  I began to pray specifically for the survival of that "who" of her.  We were told that if she lived there would be years of rehab, that she would be blind and possibly paralyzed.  None of that mattered to me.  I would take care of her anyway, always, as I had for most of her 13 years.  I was willing.  But if she were not she ... if my beloved child was no longer herself ... most specifically, if she could not love, laugh, be ...  My answer was, "Yes!  I will take care of her no matter what!"  But would she want to continue living, no matter what?  

I shared with our pastor how I was being led to pray.  He didn't seem to "get it."  No matter.  Pray, I asked, for her soul, her "psuche," the "who" of her.

The tenth day I woke before dawn with such a joy in my heart that this would be the day she would awaken.  (Odd, looking back, as she had been struck down by a vehicle 10 days earlier, on the 10th of the month at 10 p.m.)  I raced from our RV parked in the lot of the hospital to her room, the sun barely rising, praising God for this being the day He had made.  Throughout the day I watched for the fluttering of her eyes, a groan, anything that would signify her awareness.  There actually were several flutters of her eyelids, especially when I kissed her precious nose.  I thought surely she was responding and shared my joy with the nurses.  To our little girl I whispered, "Remember, the Lord is your Shepherd and Guardian.  Follow Him!" 

The ICU nurses didn't seem as hope filled as I would have expected.

I began to sense that something was dreadfully wrong.

That afternoon a technician came into our room with some machine that measured brain activity.

I rubbed my darling's feet.  The tech asked me to stop - my ministering was interfering with the readings.

Something was definitely wrong.  My spirit began to moan quietly within me.

An hour later several staff members wheeled our sweet girl to MRI.

I covered myself in my prayer shawl, which had been over her as a blanket of healing.  I cried.

Not an hour had passed before the neurosurgeon came in.  She had suffered a series of strokes in the frontal lobe.  A surgery could be performed to relieve the pressure on this other side of the brain, but the surgeon advised against it because "the Who of Andrea is gone." 

A few hours later, so was she.

I continue to wonder at the wording the doctor used.  Had God, in His mercy, prepared me?  Most surely she had indeed awakened that very day.  We teased her, even in her comatose condition, about being a princess awaiting the kiss of her Prince to waken her.  He bent to earth to kiss her that evening, July 20, 2004.

I miss her.

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