I sank lower in the steamy, hot water, submerging myself into a pool of comfort. I reflected on the words spoken by a friend earlier in the day: You will get through this.

That’s the one thing I do know. I know I’ll get through this. I just don’t know what it will look like when I get through it.

The stripping away of a lifetime of religion. The constant needing to know that God is with me and for me. The fight for finding and keeping my voice. The unrelenting desire to know grace with every fiber of my being. The crawling inch-by-inch through a dark valley of loneliness.

I soaked and I thought about some of the images from Frederick Buechner’s description of Jacob wrestling with God:

I knew only my terror and that it was dark as death. I knew only that what the stranger wanted was my life.

There were moments when we lay exhausted in each other’s arms the way a man and a woman lie exhausted from passion.

I did not know why we were fighting. It was like fighting in a dream.

He did not overpower me until the moment came to overpower me. When the moment came, I knew that he could have made it come whenever he wanted. I knew that all through the night he had been waiting for that moment. 

I would not let him go for fear that the day would take him as the dark had given him. It was my life I clung to. My enemy was my life. My life was my enemy.

I said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Even if his blessing meant death, I wanted it more than life.

I do not remember the words of his blessing or even if there were words. I remember the blessing of his arms holding me and the blessing of his arms letting me go. 

I thought about the wrestling.

I moved around easily, weightlessly in the water, a direct contradiction to how my soul had moved throughout the day…heavy, wrestling.

The wrestling, the fighting, the waiting. All of it for a blessing that seems to never come. Instead, more weariness. More impatient waiting.

The steady, rhythmic drips of water registered too much of the same in my brain. These days, I’m easily irritated by too much of the same.

I towel dried and dressed, trading in the warmth of my bath for the coolness of my front porch steps.

The incessant, high-pitched hum of cicadas violated my ears, even as I silently attempted to match their pitch. Music won’t leave me alone; yet, it eludes me. I swallowed a sip of strawberry-flavored alcohol, burning the back of my throat, not caring that it’s not good on a singer’s throat. There’s no singing.

I gazed into the darkness, up through the trees at the dimly-lit stars as I contemplated how much more there should be. Two years away from forty, and there’s got to be more than this.

More than the weariness. More than the waiting. More than the dreaming. There has to be some doing. Some risk.

I want more, and I want it more than life…the way it is now.

I thought about my girls and how I want more for them. How I don’t want them to look at me and think that this is what womanhood is. How I want them to see courage and fight in me. How I don’t want them to grow up thinking that a nice house and stuff and status quo is what makes happiness. No, I’d trade it all in a heartbeat for pure joy, and I want them to know that. And I want them to know that it’s okay to have more questions than answers. And that sometimes we don’t even know what the questions are.

And grace. Grace is always simmering on the forefront of my brain.

I thought about the wrestling and the blessing and grace. How they all are necessary and come down to the heart. A heart fully alive.

And I thought about how if He’s going to overpower me like He did with Jacob, well…Go ahead and do it. Or maybe He already has, and the wrestling has turned into a fight over me not letting go. I will not let go. I refuse. In another time, years ago, I let go…before the encounter with Him ended. Not this time.

And I wondered if Jacob was already blessed and it just took the wrestling and the hanging on for dear life for him to see the reality of it.

I will get through this. I have no doubt. But what will be left when the wrestling is over and the blessing is a reality? How much of me–my life, my enemy–will be left intact? Maybe grace will be all that’s left. Maybe grace is all I need.

 

 

Linking with Heather for Just Write