River of Tears

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

I jabbed the radio button letting the soulful Latin strains swell up and around me until the music became a magic carpet. I didn't understand a word of what I heard, but it didn't matter. I floated up and away till I was weightless. The relief was unexpected, welcome, and shocking.

More and more in the last few weeks, I sought this same refuge. At first, I was afraid to trust my magic carpet of escape. This time I sighed a ragged sigh of emerging trust and let myself be washed away.

I felt like a fern unwinding from the tight furl of infancy. I let myself float above the storm that consumed me. I tried to remember when I had not been holding on to rigging for dear life.

From the safety of my magic carpet, I looked below. I saw a river of tears, twenty-three years in the making, stretching out behind me. I could feel those tears pushing me along into a future I could not see. The current had been subtle and quiet until the storm reached a final frenzy. Then, the current erupted into an irresistible force.

May 2012

Looking back, I could not explain how the current was born or why it became strong enough to spur me to act in ways I never imagined. I had been without a gyroscope so many times but always found my way. This time was different. This time the storm had ripped away the mast, rigging, and motor of my life along with the gyroscope.

The words began to rain down around me like scud missiles of the soul. The boom was deafening and soul-shattering. I had endured before. This time the words were almost fatal. "You! This is your fault! You started this. Now you finish it!" It was a gentle introduction compared to what would follow.

When it was done, nothing was left. Not even a hint of who I had always believed myself to be. I folded inward in the days afterward trying to match the me I was with the me I had been dubbed. What

was true? What was false? How to know the difference among the voice that echoed in my head.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

When the current began to build into an irresistible force, I reached for the two-year-old bottle of pain pills. Three cracks in one leg had not hurt nearly as much as a broken soul. I swallowed one and eased away on another kind of magic carpet. A few nights later, one pill became two. Before too long, I found myself reaching for a third.

I held it in my palm and wondered how long before two would fail to numb the pain. How far was the leap from one to ten magic pills, and when would I stick the landing with both feet planted fully in the land of addiction? I dropped the pill back into the bottle and went cold turkey waiting for sleep that would not come.

I ventured out into public with decreasing frequency. I was sure that if what I had been told about me was true, I should cloister myself to protect me from public ridicule and disdain. If those epitaphs were false, I could not remain where I was and survive. I was dying a slow death of the soul. Of that fact, I was sure.

Slowly, slowly I began to fight may way back. I told myself I was up to the task. I could make peace with where I was and where I was headed. Success lay in the ability to quiet the noise in my soul. Drown out that angry voice, and I would survive.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

If only it had been that simple. The storm would wax and wane but never wear itself out. Looking back at my river of tears, I count the cost of each one. Was it worth it? Will I ever know?

I thought of Lot's wife, turned to salt because she disobeyed the angel's warning not to look back at the life she was fleeing. She was fleeing to safety in advance of God's hand of wrath, and yet what she was leaving was too familiar, maybe too comfortable, to believe flight to safety was necessary. She looked back and was frozen in time – a pillar of salt.

Oh, I am not her and yet I understand being frozen in time. I understand looking back and wondering 'what if' and 'what now'. A future I never dreamed of looms ahead. It is ominous. I close my eyes and let the music carry me away. I tell myself the one who created me knew this day was coming. I tell myself he saw twenty-three years of tears.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

What about you fraidy cat? Has life become a river of tears with a past that drives you into a foreboding future? You don't have to say a word. You are welcome here. Walk with me? Come back again. I'll be here.

Psalm 56: 8 (The Message)You’ve kept track of my every toss and turn through the sleepless nights, each tear entered in your ledger, each ache written in your book.