7:03 a.m. - 2005-11-11
Psalm 139 Rant
And I realized that I had not so much been lost as misplaced. From the blond six year old in crinolin, reverently clutching a tiny mother-of-pearl missile at Blessed Sacrament Church in Hollywood, to the eighteen year old marching solemnly down a similar aisle as though to a gilloutine, I was never out of His sight. My downsitting and my uprising, His delight. Estranged from myself for shame and grief, He had searched and known me. In the false bravado of promiscuity, in the desolation of self contempt, in the bitter remorse that clung to me like an unwanted song, He understood my thoughts afar off. Tenderly, He measured my going about and my lying down, as a proud father might mark his child's subtle growth with pencil slashes on a closet door. He made it a point to acquaint Himself with all my ways. All my ways, not just those I allowed myself to acknowledge in the light. Not a word on my tongue did He not altogether know. He knew why I had said "yes" to the marriage that emotionally severed my family for painful decades, continuing to haunt my dreams. The impossible Sophie's choice I lived. The way I paved my path with good intentions that stumbled me at every turn. I knew in the same way that I knew my own skinny toes, that He had hemmed me in behind and before. Like it or not, His hand was upon me. Flooded with knowledge too wonderful to bear, I watched in awe as He strung together every bead of memory, discarded fragments now seen as intrinsic to the whole. Where did I think I had travelled that would set me apart from His spirit? Ascending into the heavens, whether by the cheap transit of a crystal amulet or some dubious revival promising eternity, You were ever there. Whether I made my bed in the hell of a bad marriage or an adulterous affair, You were there. Taking the wings of the morning to dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Your hand would lead me home. Your right hand would hold me fast. Enveloping myself in a raging darkness of my own devise, You found me by Your radiant light. The reins of my soul lead back to You. Like a doting mother preparing for a joy incomprehensible, You knit me together in the womb of that fragile girl in polka dots. Awaiting the return of the boy across the street from somewhere far across the seas. Striding the steep hill home in his khaki uniform, clutching a stuffed bunny to his decorated chest. Joy incomprehensible. A love that lasts beyond the death that parted them. Fearfully and wonderfully was I made. And that my soul, at last, knows very well.
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