stumblingtoholiness

A few weeks ago I sat on the stairs, staring.  White hot fury burned in me, anger so deep all I could do was sit and stare, for fear of the destruction and havoc I would wreak if I dared to move.  It was Sunday.  My family was in the car, waiting.  I had been on my way out the door when the bomb was dropped.

I took it all in.  The heat and flames, explosion of emotion that threatened to destroy all, I swallowed down, deep into the heart of me.  The words that revealed lies, lies that revealed truth, truth that tore my heart apart, splintering it into kindling that ignited into fury.  My mouth tasted like ashes, and smoke filled my nostrils.  I sat and stared.  I stared at nothing, feeling wave upon wave of pain so deep I thought I would burst if I didn’t scream.

Instead I just sat and stared.  Slowly my eyes began to focus.  I saw the painting on the wall of the landing at the bottom of the stairs.  It was a wedding gift, one that I have treasured over the years.  The painting was of a forest in the fall.  It had an ethereal quality of gold, yellow, and orange leaves, blazing on trees of dark brown trunks that faded into grays in the background.  Cutting through the center of it all, a woodland stream.

I felt like I was in that forest.  Wandering in a wilderness, full of vivid color, everything blazing, but dark.  A paradox of darkness and flame, tinder ready to ignite and burn everything to nothing.  But in the middle of it all a stream.  Cool, clear, crisp, water.  Peaceful and roaring.  Refreshing and soothing.  Living water.  I yearned for it.  I ached for water to quench the fires in me.  Water to soothe the thirst of my anguishing soul.  But oh, the pain of moving!  I would have to get up out of my own hurt, step down off the banks, kneel beside the flowing stream, and drink.

But how does one get to the water in the wilderness?  In a forest so dark, when left seems right and right is left and north looks south, which way do you go?  Surely I didn’t know, frozen in place for fear of setting the whole place on fire, my anger threatening to consume me, hurt and pain raging in my ears, bracken and thorns surrounding me on every side.

I sat and stared.  I stared at the two parts of the painting.  Wilderness and water.  It was too terrifying to focus on the trees, and the empty gray between them.  I looked instead at the water.  It seemed to come straight out of the stones.  It poured over them, and into them.  Could it do that with my heart of stone?  God brought forth water from a stone.  Could my heart be softened, could the flames of anger be quenched and the firing of mud into stone be reversed, made into clay, mud molded into flesh?  What kind of a God do I believe in?

Zmr came inside and stood at the bottom of the stairs.  “Please come.”  It was my husband speaking, but I heard the words of Christ, inviting me  “…come to Me and drink.  Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:37-38, ESV)  I heard His reassurance of the woman at the well; “…whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.  The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14, ESV)  I don’t remember the exact words I answered.  I remember struggling to keep the blaze inside, words flying from my mouth as so many sparks rising from the flames of the fire in me.  Zmr said he would wait and went back outside.

I stared again at the painting.  There seemed to be no end to the wilderness.  But the water tumbled over the rocks into a pool whose outer edges could not be seen, whose depths could not be fathomed.  Which eternity did I want?  An unending wilderness, or life-giving, soul-saturating water?  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.  I heard Zmr’s words, Christ’s words echoing.  They reached out to me, offering a light in the darkness, showing me the way to Water.  I envisioned myself diving into the depths of the pool in the painting, feeling the water wash over me, and surround me.  I took another deep breath and put my hands beside me on the stairs.  I opened my eyes, took one last look at the painting, stood up, walked down the stairs, out the door, joined my family in the car, and went to church.