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.
    

   Jesus made it possible for feelings of rejection and being unwanted to leave me. I had been born with clubfeet. That is, my baby legs had no heels, they stretched out down to the toes. Through the years those internal feelings followed me and shaped my life.
   A friend Larry asked Jesus to heal those emotional wounds in me. In a time of tears and grief, Jesus held me in his arms and let me cry. He replaced that grief with a rootedness, a sense of being loved by him. I was not unwanted, I belong to him. He brought a calm into my little heart, in my grown up adult body. And he brought a rest that was not there before.
Larry said the prayer for me. But Jesus healed the wound. (Gardena, California, 1989 entry)

The tendency to judge yourself without mercy--to have difficulty having fun--to take yourself very seriously--I could relate to that.

Learning about co-dependency opened my eyes. Patterns of thinking were glued to my being. They described my life choices exactly. They seemed like unbreakable walls.

The wall breaker comes to cradle and nourish. He touches my life  through people, through counsel, through hands-on prayer, letting me cry without embarrassment, without ridicule, without shame, and the embrace goes deeper than deep. It is silver. It moves the internal landscape. The restless architecture is given outside strength and joy emerges, laughter spills out, the brittle meaness softens.

     Jesus led me across the LBI campus to Guy's apartment. To exercise the next step in the New Hope program, I would share "all the things I know I had done wrong to people," I would disclose them to another human being. Guy was just another student who sat in the same classes as me, someone I did not know well. He knew Jesus and he did listen to my long list of mistakes. What I remember the MOST was the hug at the end. When I did, I began to cry and all the tears came out. He did not pull away from me. I was so embarrassed to soak his shirt with tears. Guy said it was ok. And so I just stood there crying on his shoulder. It was like Jesus was holding me and it was a safe place to cry.
    Jesus became very real to me in THOSE MOMENTS!!! He was not ashamed of me or my behavior. He let me pour out my heart. And after all that crying there came a peace. (Anaheim, California 1988 entry)

    In Isaiah this morning (chapter 40 verse 11) God comes to every person as a shepherd to cradle his young lambs. He comes to settle the anxiety and the restlessness that bears no name, that is glued to my being.

    Joy expressed in my life these past twenty years came out of his nurture and cradling. Enjoying life, enjoying my job, enjoying painting, enjoying assemblages, enjoying singing and humming and playing guitar, making melody, enjoying cooking, enjoying bike rides, enjoying people, being open, being myself, enjoying times in his presence, caught off guard when he taps my shoulder, enjoying the fingerprints of his knowledge that scientists have recently published,
laughing, and cracking up; going easier on myself, and telling him he is remarkable.

He paints this value of himself ON TOP OF ME. the architecture laughs, the brittleness sings, the rusty kettle blogs yes.

You Paint Joy On Top Of Me by Karl Marxhausen, 40 by 40 inches, sand and acrylic paint on panel 
Elsewhere art exhibit, All Souls Gallery, 4501 Walnut, Kansas City, MO. November 6th to December 2nd, 2011

 
    prayer had been said for me, tears had flowed as i laid on betty's living room carpet. at one point larry was asking me to speak simple words with my lips. i could not do it. i would not do it. my jaw was clenched. the muscles stubborn. my mind heard his request. my body was unwilling. weird, right? after many mental tries, the words were eventually formed and spoken, "jesus is lord."

    there have been times in my faith walk when the unexpected happened. like, loosing my ability to walk, walking woozy at mc donalds, being drunk with no substances in my system, and falling down on the floor in the front of the church with other parishioners, during ministry time. The king james bible records roman solders falling down like dead men at the tomb where jesus was buried. daniel, ezekiel, and john all fell down like dead men. it has happened to me, while being in the presence of one i could not see. 

but---letting tears roll, having muscles twitch and jerk, feeling repeat contractions in my chest and legs, the grunts and groans, laying on the carpet while the unseen interfaces with you---is all worth the release, healing, and calm that follows. unexplainable, yes. illogical, very. irrational, of course. still, it is biblical. the risen jesus and his holy interface is a reality. coming undone and unraveling in his presence is blessed.

   there is no one-time fix. that has not been my experience. mine has been a path where one is unwilling yet led. where a choice of yes comes with prompts from an outside source. a unnatural relationship. he breaks in and brings sanity to my life. everyone who calls upon this lord will be made sane. i am the one found clothed in my right mind.

Unraveling In His Embrace by Karl Marxhausen, 36 by 48 inches, acrylic on canvas.

Elsewhere art exhibit, All Souls Gallery, 4501 Walnut, Kansas City, MO. November 6th to December 2nd, 2011