feeling it

    I woke up this morning from a dream about mom. She was telling me how it was when she was with her doctor after I was born. Her grappling with the absence of my feet. How she herself was in a daze coming out of the ether. It wasn't until she unwrapped the bundle that was placed in her arms that she noticed my legs were straight with tiny toes at the end of them. No feet for her baby. The doctor pronounced her first child had clubfeet.

    In the dream she wasn't specific but implied that the doctor knew things that were confidential. The dream said no more than that. As I typed this post, it was the stories she had spoken to me that filled in the gaps. How they had been at a beer party earlier that day, driving over a bumpy rural road to get her to go into labor. And so on.

    I thought about a Carrollton friend Charlie when he cried over the phone to me, scared to death with the reality of his own grief. Its awkwardness, its tumble, what it is like to FEEL it bubble out, without dignity. The words of David came to mind in Psalms 56:8. How all our struggles and tears were kept by God in a bottle, as a valuable part of our existence, given his attention.  How precious were our tears. In contrast to sharing the pain, life has told me to keep those pains shielded from public view. Hold the grief down. Hang on to the hurts. Build up walls. Be like an island or a rock, as the poet Paul Simon wrote.

    One morning as she headed out Jan told me that I should take some time to think about my mother and write down the memories I have of her. (Double click to enlarge images)

She advised me to be open to crying. "Let the tension and stress be released." As she spoke memories began to surface. So,  I acted on my wife's idea, curled up in the recliner, wrote and drew in my journal.


It was like the lyrics of Running Blind by Michael Hedges. The way memories went "tearing its way through my heart."

Hedges' song here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBiQAEBYIWY and lyrics follow.

Somewhere defined in aimless words
Somewhere within my angry herd
of stampeding emotions
Love was running blind

I read my way through those scattered pieces
Gathered up all the trampled feelings
And built up the fences strong
so l could hide

But all night long I would stare
at all the moon and the stars I could bear
Then from daylight on
It would tear through my heart
It went tearing its way through my heart
Tearing its way through my heart

Dazzling circles slow too soon
But dancing to some forgotten tune
You weave in the sky some pattern I can trace
Fading to taste the afterglow
Pure as the song you sing so low
Your senses came down to meet me
Face to face

Baby all night long I would stare
at all the moon and the stars I could bear
Then from daylight on
It would tear through my heart
It went tearing its way through my heart
Tearing its way through my heart
Tearing its way

As I drew and waited and put down more, it happened to me. The thing Jan suspected took place.

The Holy Spirit of God unlocked the muscle memories within.

 

The silence in the house was broken with deep sobs felt in my stomach muscles.




Groans and coughs.
Spitting into the wastebasket.
Letting the memories out.


Like the way she relentlessly squeezed my pimples when I was a teenager. I hated that about her. That memory of violation. Like the way she drank alcohol during her pregnancy and the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome that deformed my feet. The shame and rejection put onto my little heart. The restoration that God brought back to me through the prayers of Betty, Larry, Jan, and others. 

 
By his stripes we are healed, Isaiah wrote in his book 53:5. To me that meant my reality today could be altered by what Jesus did, when he died and resurrected from the dead. His act was like a historic vortex that sucked up every harsh memory I chose to go of and infused an x factor that brought release and healing to my mental state in the present.

When I told Charlie about my mom dream God spoke through his words to encourage me. What was so damn important about being needy, emotional, feeling these feelings, and asking for help? The way that dream came to me. The way You put me in that position. The way You chose to visit and open the door for Charlie to help me.