by Julie Webb Kelley
"So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
-- Words of Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus
FULLY ALIVE
The building sits close to the water, immense and imposing over the slobbery river – a longtime magnet for a number of suicides. As I make my way toward the structure, I can’t help but wonder, is it possible that God had some other use for my life other than being weak with cancer and selfish with fear? I consider the possibility for the millionth time, and at the end of the prospect, for the millionth time, lurks the same silence.
Years ago I had accepted that my body was something I could no longer trust, with its aches and pains, its limitations and constrictions. But my mind turning on me, deserting me . . . now that had come as a complete surprise. My head still awash with nervous nightmares and depressing doubts, I climb the stairs to the overlook on the seventeenth floor. I push the hefty door aside and drag my feet across the pebbled rooftop. The tiny moon squatting in a corner of the black sky is something to savor. I breathe in the inviting darkness; it smells of reverence and qualm.
Leaning on the ledge straining to see the reeking serum below, I catch the reflection of the moon on the surface of the water. Maybe it looks like a button I can press to summon a celestial bellboy to help me; maybe it resembles a target longing to be reached. I’m not sure because that’s when I see her up on the ledge, stiff and angled as if the hurts of her days had filled her limbs leaving her shriveled and empty. I step closer, thankful now for the glint of moonlight allowing me to see the parcels weighing on her arms: the gifts God had given her that she was now ready to give back. A sharp wind cuts the curtain of pain between us. I see a slight tremble press her closer to the edge.
“Some days I too feel as if God has thrown me up in the air and caught me with a pair of scissors,” I tell her.
She doesn’t move, she doesn’t respond and I realize that she had already noticed me some time ago . . . perhaps coming across the path toward the building, perhaps mounting the stairs or drooling over the height of the evening. I feel compelled to offer something more than the pitiful display of words I had offered. But she speaks first.
“I think God knew.” She says.
I inch closer, waiting. The gifts she’s holding shift, yet her arms don’t move.
“Knew what?” I finally ask.
“He knew how much we would need love. How desperate we would be to get it, to win it, to handle it. And He knew how disappointing, how unfulfilled the love of another human would be. He knew it all along . . . that’s why . . .”
“What? That’s why what?” I urge her, craving the answer and forgetting her precarious position.
“That’s why He made His own love available . . . so that we would never have to feel as if we’ve settled for anything less than real love.”
“Yes.” I say. “You’re right. So why are you on the ledge?”
“Because it is our despair as well as our faith that makes us human.”
For the first time, she turns toward me, her anemic face studying me. There is something familiar in her eyes that reaches out to me, a beefy and frantic calm that can’t be concealed. It is then that I recognize the parcels in her arms – the reliability and creativity, the sensitivity, persistence and willingness – and I become vastly afraid of myself.
“Ordinary dangers are nothing compared to this. Nothing compared to being unable to wash the murkiness from your mind, nothing compared to fear dominating your body.” She turns back toward the night, stretching herself further into the shadows.
“You should come down,” my words trickle out as if from the spout of a lazy water fountain; I doubt if she heard them.
"Life is a possession.” She says.
“If life is a possession it belongs to God, not us.” I reach a hand toward her.
“Why should I come down?
The question stings, like a slap on the wrist. I let my arm flop to my side. Then like a draft moving horizontally under a door, a gust of understanding chills me from my feet to my head.
“Perhaps,” I pause, struggling to put the words in the right order. “Perhaps the same impetuosity that makes you want to end your life is what could enable you to love it all the more.”
Her feet shuffle and her head tilts toward me. “It seems unspeakable that I could go on.”
“I could go on with you.”
“Where?”
“The place you told me about. Where there’s real love . . . God’s love.”
She shakes her head, “It may be a real, but it’s not accessible. I’ve tried.”
I start to answer but am distracted by her graceful pivoting on the ledge.
“Take these. They belong to you.” She drops the gifts.
The parcels fall toward me. Instinct forces my reach to catch what I can, but I miss them all. They hit the ground one by one. I watch the rooftop interrupt gravity, watch the packages roll to a halt, topsy-turvy, dented and scraped. I stoop; gathering up the mess, then notice her hand is reaching toward me. I can taste relief on my tongue, and even with my arms full, I am eager to help her down. Shoving the packages into the crook of one arm, I touch her hand.
She grips mine. In a moment I am pulled up onto the ledge. I mutter a protest, but it’s too late. She leans in close, steadying me, inspecting me. I can see in the waxen outline of her eyes half my thoughts, half my talents, half my toxins.
“You want to be up here too, don’t you?” She asks, a sliver of a smile winking at me, her hand still embracing mine.
“No.”
“Then why did you come here tonight?”
---
To be continued . . .
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