Putting a Doer to Rest

I.

The wave is forceful, it is directional. The wave curves up and jumps in a sometimes perfectly rounded, sometimes chaotic ‘U’. It ever stretches its arms toward the pull-aim-strike of the shore.

II.

The dam was built, and it barricades and it narrows and it towers over. The waves rose more wild, more torrenteous, determined to squeeze into the cracks of the dam and explode it to its fall. Each stream of the edge of the wave was like a long screaming tear with the smell of disinfected, decaying flesh. The dam tamed the waves until they became like a groveling, wet, dirty, homeless dog with no dignity and no shelter.

III.

Let me smooth my hand over your tired eyes. Close them not in your death but in your rest.

The sea gently rocked back and forth in its place, not in irritation, not temperamentally. Let what should flow in and out of the dam flow in and out of the dam. The waves are stilled for now.

IV.

I decided to go all the way with my belief—that You love me.

despite Leah’s unfulfilled longing

despite Jeremiah’s useless weeping

even though You love me mostly in a way that hurts

and I watch other people—

Alex must always be happy and have his people—

that he can spend an hour talking about:

“It’s very important to me.”

You have hurt me,

but always surround him with love.

You are healing my mom’s deepest wound with her mom,

And you must keep doing it,

until this warmth is hers.

You leave me anxious, restless, on my looking-around ground,

and I have nothing steady for eager anticipation.

I am tired, and I will stop my web-making.

The hundred people who make me look about anxiously

I turn my head away,

I will sit with my lesson plans,

And in the quietness of my living room,

Turn my head at my hundred students.

My backdown from the hundred people will not sever my web,

I will stop making one,

Trust that I will not lose what should be mine.

Let me believe that You love me—

You love me in a harsh way I am unable to claim—

But let me believe that You love me,

And claim it for me.

V. 

I believe that Leah could’ve been happy. And this hundredfold I have looked to grasp for the past three-and-a-half years, or more like six-and-a-half years, I shall have it now—I think I am finally ready. The thorn that Leah could have lived into fullness and happiness with that same life she lived, that Leahs without anything changing in their lives could have my savior’s abundant life, could have my savior’s full joy, could have my savior’s promised hundredfold, I set my face to receive it—because I will come to stand on Jesus’ love that is the solid rock of my life—now that after six-and-a-half years of web-making I have used up all the breath in my body—and nothing I fail to get for myself will change his love for me, so that means there’s nothing I must get. I did for my whole life—now I’ll bring my whole life before him and let him do.