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Fully Alive (Part 2 of 2)

 

by Julie Webb Kelley

(Click here if you missed Part 1.)

“I don’t know.” I mumble, wishing she’d let go of me.

 “Sure you do. You can’t find the place of real love either can you? As big and vast as it’s supposed to be, this mighty love of God that sent Jesus and raised Him from the dead . . . you haven’t really experienced it either. We’ve both lived a lifetime and missed it. Admit it.”

 “That’s not true.”

 “Then tell me something about it I don’t know.” The challenge sounds like a threat; I can feel my heart prickle with Goosebumps. 

 The parcels jumble around in my arm ready to topple, my feet are still struggling to find balance, and her clamping fingers are cutting my skin. The darkness is suddenly thicker, the dampness below closer. I try to explain, “I know it’s not . . . God’s love, I mean, it’s more than what you said. More than quantity and quality. I’m not exactly sure, but it’s more than might and power filled with positive character traits.”

 Her hand twists in mine, suddenly releasing me, leaving me swaying and unsure.

 “What’s that supposed to mean?” She spits the question onto the ledge. I will it toward myself, coddling it for courage.

 “God’s love is not just some massive depth of emotion, it’s more like the most absolute element of any proportion and . . . it’s something that is impossible for Him to withhold from us. He is love, so He can never set it aside in His dealings with mankind. He can never consider us in any other manner than through the veil of His love.”  A ripple of thunder ruptures nearby, startling my thoughts. I can feel rain stepping in between us.

 She looks at me, her gaze fraying my words. “I don’t believe you.”

 “It’s true. He maintains His love . . . He is persistent in advancing it toward us, compassionate about asserting it in our direction and diligent about converging it on us like . . . like an amiable thrust or a gentle bulldozer leaving us comfortably crushed. I know, because . . .”

 “I wish I could believe you.” She is still . . . staring at me, just the wind blowing brand new baby rain drops onto her face.

 She takes in a long breath, lifts her head to the dark and closes her eyes to the moon. I watch her spread her arms and surrender to the gloom below her.

 “NO!” I shout too late, reach too late, recover my balance too late . . . the gifts flop around as my own arms fly open and my body stretches into a free fall. In a moment I choose to believe in the love of God. Succumbing to a love that cannot help but hold me, I allow the falling, the folding of myself, the quitting of all things carnal. I welcome the ultimate act of self-death entrusting my destination to His desire.

 As the moist, ebony air rushes past me, I hear chains breaking; I tumble through the shattering and the shock, feeling the full weight of my lack. Yet, in the mist of this dreadful descent I feel the thick robe of fear sliding off my mind, the heavy cloak of fright slipping from my heart. The strange taste of freedom fills my mouth; the smell of joy engulfs my senses.

 With a jolt I land onto the heap of God’s love. Still at last, I open my eyes. I see my gifts within arm’s reach and I marvel at their resilience. Then I see her . . . just beyond the heap, her frame face-up in the water, every part of her that couldn’t believe now floating and hollow. My mind blurs as tears choke my throat. At first I think it’s sadness overtaking me but then realize it cuts deeper, more like the final embrace of a friend.

 The moon crawls from behind a thunder cloud spotlighting a distant portrait of my life. I see in the picture myself and my gifts caught in the intimate act of living and dying. A desperate wooziness bends my insides as I study myself on the canvas . . . the presence of life moving, the ghost of death hovering, the glory of God lifting and rising through both. The portrayal reaches out pure and transparent, causing my soul to wilt, my spirit to soar, and my heart to bow.

 It compels me to commit one final act of abandon. But as I lean toward submission, I realize that I am coupled to this marvelous heap, wrapped in a reality of attachment that I had never considered before. I look down and notice two things of a completely different nature permanently joined . . . my entire being adhered to God’s love. As I turn it sticks to me. As I rise it lifts with me. As I move it covers me. I can never be separated from it. I realize I am in the perfect place to stop protesting, to give up my life, to relinquish my death. It seems right to release my final breath here, on this heap, secure in God’s love. As I lower myself back onto the heap, settling in to the warmth of it, retreating, accepting the cessation of life and allowing the inevitability of death . . . the heap shifts and, in my relentless surrender, peace displaces the final fragments of terror and I am lost in love, sweetly shattered . . . and for the first time ever I am fully alive.

The Beginning

Fullly Alive (Part 1 of 2)

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 . . .