Mortal Senses

         A month and a half, or so, ago I played one of the very best scrabble games in my life. Nobody was chirping in over my shoulder telling me what to do, nobody was leaning back with a huff while I sorted through combinations in my head and told me the game was boring. Best of all, to my infinite satisfaction, we used up every single letter in the game on legitimate words. I also learned that Yup is, indeed, in the dictionary. Who would have thought?
         The whole thing reminded me, once again, however, of just how minute my vocabulary still is. In an attempt express a thought that I had last night, the pang came back in full force. I stumbled over two syllable words whose mundane usage rebelled against the grandeur of the feeling I was endeavoring to vocalize.
          To read a well-written poem with exquisitely placed words, so formed that it comes to life, is a thrill to my soul and I long to possess the vocabulary necessary to communicate even so well. And yet, I know, even if I were to master every single word that exists in the English language (or any other language for that matter) I would still have thoughts I could not verbalize. It's a horrid feeling, in many ways. I really do feel as though I'm about to explode, and not only that, but also that I would feel infinitely better if I did.
           Why is it that I can have thoughts and emotions that no human tongue can articulate?

         When I hold my little nephew in my arms, his tiny head resting on my arm, those soulful eyes, so naive, and yet so intelligent, gazing into mine, I think about what he will be like when he's older, when he's not so ignorant of the world around him. What will he be? And a sympathy and yearning that I never knew I possessed, aches and throbs within my breast. Perhaps it's the early pang's of a mother's love, having never been a mother before I cannot be certain, but I do know, suddenly, right then, that I would do almost anything to protect and help that little baby.
            He's no angel. He bawls when he's grumpy, makes a ruckus when he's hungry. Heaven knows he has little enough to complain about, and yet he does it with all the vim and vigor the whole two-feet of him can manage. And still, I love him more than is possible to disclose with that little, four-letter word. And yet, even if, like the Hebrews, we had four words for love, I'm not sure I could manage to communicate what I feel.
         In this case, along with the feeling comes a desire. A desire that's lain dormant in me for most of my life, budding every now and again, but now yielding to full blossom. The longing to have a child of my own. Almost, as though, if I did, all the tenderness I posses regarding Jayden might be adequately manifested through one of my own. And yet, right now, it is not to be. And even if it was, I know that it would still fail to satisfy the craving.

       Why do I have good and right longings when I cannot fulfill them?
       My youngest brother Benaiah, though I mother him far more than I should, is still very much a brother to me. When I scold him, or when we get into fights, it's only because I see him making a choice that I regretted when I got older, or he has some form of faulty logic which he'll later do a face-palm over. We have a decent relationship, but every now and again I feel miles apart from him.
       He often thinks I take delight in calling out his faults, and I know I need to be more encouraging. A balance must be struck, and even then, sometimes he misconstrues an honest, and, what I thought, expedient action on my part.
 
     Why can something good possibly be interpreted as something so bad?
         A lovely friend of mine came from Arizona to visit a couple weeks ago. To say that we had a lot of fun would be a gross understatement. It made me realize that the two friends I feel closest to, that have the best influence on me, live miles away. One in East Tennessee, and one across the country in Arizona. If I'm not careful, I'll sometimes go off on thought tangents, imagining what would be the case if both these friends lived within ten miles of me, or I of them. Even better, throw in another really great friend who lives in Colorado, and how about the one in Ohio, or Washington state, or Oregon, or Texas! It's frightening the way I can build my little utopia with all the people I like best and immediately my wonderful life here seems infinitely more drab.

I have a few great acquaintances here. Yes, I have to make more of an effort to be friends with them. We don't think in sync like I do with these others, but that's a good thing, right? It sharpens and challenges me.
       Still, in the face of indisputable logic and common good sense, even when I see so much around me to be thankful for, I sometimes suffer myself to sulk. How can I be so pig-headed? To want what I want so badly that I make myself miserable over it?

       Why can such a blessed person as myself find it in me to miss out on the good that is before me because I'm seeking the good, perhaps even lesser good, that is removed from me?



        Last night, I stood on a grand stage with just a choir. There might have been an audience behind me, but I didn't notice. It was just me and the above, magnificent piece of music.........
..........Actually, I lay on my bedroom floor, headphones on, my CD player rattling away on it's little ball feet, and I was conducting the ceiling. Yet this room of mine was transformed into a place of infinite magnificence. I could see my choir singing, heads up, mouths wide open, I could see them  respond as I gave all the right cues in all the right places. I knew then, that one of my deepest longings on this earth, one that goes hand-in-hand with being a wife and mother is to someday stand on a stage and conduct a choir like this.
         Will it ever happen? I know not, it seems so far away, and yet I want it so badly. A moment of almost heavenly bliss. An utterance insurmountable. A glimpse of God's glory.

         That's when I realized it. All these longings, these desires, these frustrations, are all mortal attempts to grasp the divine. Many of them good, some of them twisted, but all, like a sunflower reaching to the sun, the feeble striving of a creature to be like its Creator. That's why it feels like I want to explode sometimes, and that it might be good. We can expect no less from the finite reaching for the infinite.
            I wonder if the baby feels it before he can speak. Trying to communicate thoughts he doesn't yet have the knowledge or the vocabulary to fully understand. Perhaps that's why he can be such a "grumpalumps." We tell the grownup who complains not to be such a baby. But, in a sense, that's what we are: little children in the face of incomprehensible majesty.

     What do you do when you glimpse eternity? One part of me yearns for it with a longing that will never go away, and another part, I think, goes mad from the sheer grandeur of it all, never to recover.

      What can we do? Well, like the child, we learn to wait and trust.
            "If I find in myself, longings and desires that this world cannot satisfy, the logical conclusion must be that I was made for another world." So writes C.S. Lewis. The child must trust that someday he will be able to grasp what was once incomprehensible. We all remember being told, at some point or another, you'll understand when you are older. And, most of the time we did. How can anybody possibly enjoy sitting around a table talking when you can go outside and play tag or invent silly games instead? Well, when I grew up, I understood what the grownups found so fascinating about those after dinner conversations.

          Someday, I'll graduate from this world. Someday, I shall behold the face of the infinite and not die, for I will have already done so. This mortal will put on immortality.

          Until then, these glimpses that make my heart ache, and my lungs feel like exploding are simply signposts. My mount Pisgah in this life. Someday, I shall understand as I was intended to. Someday I shall know fully, as I, also, am fully known.

          Until then, my friends, life beckons with joy, and, I'm sure, a great deal of sorrow, but through it all, you shall see a glint in my eye, hear a whisper in my soul, behold a single indistinguishable pigment in my art. It will be that one quivering, pulsating note that vibrates in all of us.

Don't dampen the string when you feel it begin to thrum.

Don't turn away and lock the door.

Don't wrap your heart in iron bands so that it will not break.

Let it break, and burn, and overflow.

The strings of the piano only make music when they are hit with a hammer, the leaves array themselves in their most glorious colors when they are dying, and we, my friends, are dying too. Dying that we may live a life eternal.


 Happy Fall....(Y'all!)

     ~ Christianna