“It’s okay, Shalom. Mama’s here, Mama’s here.”
I draw her up close.
In between the waves of fears, tears, that wrack her little body, she tries to catch her breath, reaching, turning, struggling.
Anxiously, her fingers find my face. Ten fingertips gently brush along my lips, patter across my eyelids, touch my cheek. Like fingertips tentatively feeling along the embossing of Braille, again and again, she lightly reads my face.
“Is it you, Mama? Is it you who are really here with me?”
Into the dark, I smile. This has always been her way, this face reading, this face feeling. A babe of only a few months, she would howl through the night, and I would crouch over her basket, and Shalom, between sobs, would stretch frantically for me, clutching my face in her chubby fists. Desperately, whimpering, she’d pull my face close to her wet cheeks, run her hand across my mouth, rest her fingers on my eyes…and then sniffle… closes her eyes…eyelashes would still, breath slow, fingers relax…and sleep would softly fall.
Little Child needed no holding, no rocking, no nursing. Peace came, but nothing had changed. Except the assurance of my presence. All was well.
I know my own nightmares, day terrors, desert hallucinations that pursue across the sands. Waking to the everyday gifts, the common miracles, daily graces, this is my way of feeling for His face, my way of knowing He is pressed close.
I read Him in syrup melting down into stacks of pancakes, in the heavy breathing of slumbering children under old quilts, in the moss curling around old trunks down in the woods. A monarch lights on the clump of coneflowers by the picket fence, we linger after the noon picnic in the surprise of Indian summer, cold water runs from my tap. These are the graces, the magnanimous, munificent gifts, that I daily seek to run my fingers across, feeling for His face.
In my common deserts, I have found the daily discipline of fingering for Him in small things, in giving thanks for all that is, reveals the contours of Who He is. This waterfall of little grand gifts unveils the features of His countenance, the gentleness of His heart.
Waking to God near as we intentionally open eyes and give thanks, we experience the words that Pascal wrote more than 300 years ago,
"Instead of complaining that God had hidden Himself, you will give Him thanks for having revealed so much of Himself." (Pensees)
And yet we do not fixate "on the things that are seen, but on the things that are unseen" (2 Cor 4:17, 18 NEB). The daily gifts are not ends in themselves, but rouse us to become present to His abiding Presence. They lead us along the beam, back to His love.
I can rest. I have caressed and know. He is close.Father? I feel You everywhere. You are beautiful and I have nothing to fear.
Today's Drink of Scripture:
"The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face shine upon you." ~NIV Numbers 6:23-25
"God bless you and keep you, God smile on you and gift you." ~MSG Numbers 6:23-25
Consider beginning your own gift list...feeling for His face
(adapted from a post originally posted 9/21/07)
