Saturday, March 26, 2011

Dead Man With the King… Part 2


"What is it you would like from Me?" He asked.

"You have already given and done all," I answered through my tears.

He smiled at that in what seemed like genuine approval, but how does a mere creature accurately read the face of his Creator?

"You know," He said, "I became a Man, not just to die for you, but so that you could also know Me, and by knowing Me, know My Father."

"But there is nothing left for You to give," I said, overwhelmed that He was speaking to me!

"I delight to give My children the desires of their heart," He said simply. "Do not think that there is an end to My grace. I made you for Me. I know you and have gone to great lengths to enable you to believe that I love you."

Then suddenly I was back in the birthing room with my wife just before our first daughter was born all those years ago. She was our first, and I did not know Him at that time, or believe that He existed or cared for me. Incredibly, I had not really wanted this beautiful and precious child in our lives, so blatant was my selfishness. And I considered my wife to be in great debt to me by my agreeing to allow this to occur. Knowing He was with Me now in reliving this experience filled me with unfathomable shame. How could He have been so kind, even then?

Then I saw her emerge into the world from her mother's womb and all cynical speech and thought fled from me and I stared in awe at this miracle of new human life. I did not know it, but tears were flowing down my face, perhaps for the first time in my adult life while sober, and I literally could not speak. Everything I thought I knew and believed became as nothing, and I have since come to know that the overflowing and surprising love that I felt for my infant daughter at the very moment of her birth was His gift to me, as much as she herself was. It was Him all along, and I did not know it.

That same evening, right there in that same room, this new gift of life stopped breathing for the briefest of instants, and when that occurred my whole existence dropped out from under me like a bottomless pit had opened up in the earth below me, to swallow me forever.

This too was His gift.

Frenzied but purposeful action by the attending midwife brought my baby back to life without any permanent harm within seconds, but the lesson of unbearable loss was seared into my heart and mind, and from that moment onward, my self-confidence and my ability to cope with the vulnerabilities of this life began to crumble.

Days, weeks and months passed in my memory once more, but this time I knew He was with Me, right next to Me, as, of course, He had been at the time, as well. I just did not know it. I saw my younger self wallow increasingly in self-pity, striving diligently to deny that anything had changed, when everything had, in fact, changed irrevocably, and I was rapidly deteriorating.

Together we saw me turn in desperation and utter selfishness back to the depths of the well of alcohol, in rigid and brittle moderation at first, but with the sure and certain knowledge that it was a path that this time would inevitably lead me to destruction, and to the loss of the very things I could not even admit were important to me for fear that I would lose them. Lose her.

He stood with me, as my delusion of competence and my ability to cope with life collapsed like the fragile and ephemeral hallucination it was, and I became the epitome of quiet desperation, casting frantically about for some life preserver, becoming harder on the outside, as the man I was inside dissolved in the fierce acid of overwhelming fear.

Yet another of His gifts.

Stubbornly, inexcusably, I resisted the growing conviction that I could not continue in this way for long without having all semblance of living ability ripped away in an avalanche of self-pity and defeat.

Then we saw my wife, grieved beyond words that this child she loved so much would have to be given into the hands of others to be cared for during the day so that she could return to work, as I so intractably insisted she do as soon as possible. And by His grace, she sought comfort and strength from the only place where they could be found, His love letter to Creation - His marvelous Word.

He comforted her and brought her to Him, so gently, so effectively, so extravagantly lovingly, that she changed fundamentally right before my eyes, and through Him, loved me more despite my utter self-centeredness and self-absorption.

His gifts kept coming inexorably, like wave after wave upon the shore, unstoppable, undeniable, completely undeserved.

Until, at the appointed time, he brought me to the end of myself, and into His all-encompassing arms.