Something up in the tree, dripped, drip, drip drip, like after a rain stops but the trees are still raining. I stood in the gate looking for the northern lights because it was Autumnal Equinox when a crack opens in the magnetic fields. The sky was just plain dark except for neighbor’s yard lights. I saw through to the faint Milky Way and heard leaves rustling. There were no eyes peering back in the light. I stood next to the giant poplar tree, where we heard the swarm of bees for the last time. I don’t know where they settled or if they’ve gone quiet in a hollow.
I found myself in a cave, where I heard the drip, drip, drip of water from rocks. My candle, my friendly candle, a light I could hold in my hand pushed back the dark. I saw how the rock made a temple, but don’t remind me of such things. The stone smelled like sulphur. I burrowed here to hide from the wrath of the lamb. Fall on me, please fall on me. I snuffed the candle. The darkness held me, comforted me. And so did the fear.
So much light outside. It hurts to see. So much love, those eyes, his eyes, accepting every part of me, my fat thighs, and protruding belly, and dry lady parts, my hooded eyes, my old lady lines that draw down my face in a frown. I pull my legs up, cross my arms, lay my hands on each side of my collar bone. The dark, the dark is a comfort. So is the fear because I know it.
My husband, a mere mortal, stands behind me, his hands gentle, says he loves me, how can I bear the Other, the good Creator’s love, so wide and broad and high and deep. Our creator who says he named the stars and comforts the broken hearted. I have felt that comfort, but not now.
Rocks, rocks please fall on me. I can’t bear the light. My husband terrified me like the fear of a lightning strike whacking the barn, my horse inside, because his love is so good and one day he will lie down in the dirt or I will, and we will be torn apart.
How can we bear to be held by love as great as the universe, that burns and thunders with more power than the sun lapping and licking at the empty cold, warming us. How can we bear the wrath of the lamb, the horrid contortions of God, stretched out on a cross. Suffering we can’t begin to fathom. The men ran, the women stayed and wept and endured like they endured the birth of their children. They waved the flies away.
The good things He gives, that He means for me to share, condemn me. I am weary of the guilt. The good Christians, the early Christians say I am blaspheming by my wealth, by holding onto closets of clothes, a garage full of stuff, a full belly. I don’t spend enough time with my horse, who stands at the gate, longing, sometimes calling, but I don’t walk out to her. I buy stuff I do not use. Dante had a special, cruel place in hell for people like me.
Lord Jesus Christ be merciful to me a sinner.
And yet I say no to the nudges that say give up Diet Coke, give all your money away, apologize to the woman who hurt you. Nudges seem to be God’s voice. Because they slide up from old sayings that say if you disobey, God will pull his blessings, that say make peace even if they are wrong.
Oh my goodness I can’t take my eyes off dreadful. Facebook in the morning, Facebook in the afternoon, Facebook in the evening when there are promises to be read, to let sink in. Promises like “I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass and have forgotten the Lord, your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth and you fear continually all the day because of the wrath of the oppressor, when he sets himself to destroy? And where is the wrath of the oppressor?” (Isaiah 51: 12 -13, ESV) But I am powerless to stop looking. I pick up my phone.
Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world have mercy.
The day I posted my political perspectives about how our hate for each other is rising, how speech that is free today might be hate speech tomorrow, and the police will come knocking. My heart, my heart hurt so bad, I held my hands to my heart. I clutched my pearls. I breathed deep. Rain poured outside. I breathed.
I thought how my father sat down and died of a broken heart, five months after my mother’s death. I’d just complained about how hard my job was the night before. He said, “I’m proud of you.”
I shivered in the cave. The wrath of the lamb. Being naked without a body, just my soul before all that light, all that love that won’t leave me be. Some Christians ask us to pray for the dead because the dead are in crisis, being cleaned up, the soap full of pumice, the soap a fire.
I used to long to go home to be with the Lord because this world hurt so much, because I love Jesus, but now that I am my father’s age when he died, I am afraid. I have outlived my brother and my mother. Now it’s time to outlive my father.
The preachers say the wrath of the lamb is refining fire, cleansing all that is not love’s kind. But have they ever walked through a foundry, seen the white-hot steel poured from cauldrons? Smelled burnt metal? I have asked to be cleaned up before I leave this earth. What have I done?
I stood under the stars again, the hayfield wide open to me. The Milky Way still looked faint. The Big Dipper dipped in front. And Cassiopeia’s double u. Orion won’t rise until the middle of the night.
The next morning I held a bright green creature in my hand and felt its sticky grip as he crawled on my hand. I asked Facebook what they might know. It’s a Luna moth with beautiful green wings. I wonder if I will see the moth before fall sets in, if it will lay its eggs and be done or will it arrive next spring?
The terror eased when I threw my harness on Morgen, her eyes soft. I swear the mare was glowing with joy, until I pulled the girth up tight. I played Michael W. Smith’s “Surrounded” where Smith begins by saying, “The Lord says for the spirit of heaviness put on the garment of praise. This is how I fight my battles. I’m surrounded. I’m surrounded by you.” I fastened the crupper, hooked the breast collar to the saddle and looped the reins through the harness. Morgen yawned and I slipped the bridle on. We pulled out of the barn yard and walked into the sunlight, the corn dried, wind rattling it. I looked out over her back and through her ears, felt the carriage shift over the uneven ground.
And then there is this: “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite. For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry; for the spirit would grow faint before me, and the breath of the life that I made” (Isaiah 57: 15 – 16, ESV).
Lord Jesus Christ son of the living God have mercy on me a sinner.
Works Cited
Smith, Michael W. “Surrounded” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBl84oZxnJ4. September 28, 2024.
The Holy Bible ESV. Good News Publishers ; Crossway Bibles, 2007.
