A Blue Day

Driving back from our Mennonite church Sunday afternoon, I gazed out the car window (Martin was driving) at the blue sky--blue the color of what? Silk, the heart of a violet, the sea over sand--an impossible blue, especially in this part of the world on the first day of February.

That morning I had looked out our kitchen window, caught the furry white line of a contrail and I started singing: I SEE A CONTRAIL! over and over to the tune of a Cat Stevens song. I love being startled by a pure blue day in the middle of all this hummy-drummy winter grey.

Well, by the time church, kid-gathering, and grocery store stop was over, I was not as mesmerized by the blue and the sunshine--rather, I was a bit sleepy but most of all I felt worried. I had exchanged stories with friend there who had told me about some tragedies in her life which mirrored some of my deepest worries: one or two are old favorites, the ones that grab me by the throat when, lifting a hungry Beatrix to my breast in the middle of the night, I feel some lump or thickening, when my mind jumps to words like breast cancer, sending shocks deeply into my mind and heart. This worry is a personal favorite, and has never come to anything. The other worry was real. My friend, whom I love dearly, is very ill.

Though we had just sung a beautiful hymn about releasing anxiety to God, I had walked from that good place of peace over to the narrow path between all that is normal and familiar on one hand and all that is baffling and terrifying and unknown on the other. I'm afraid this is a path I find myself on occasionally, and I am always walking alone there. It is my own mental "valley of the shadow--" and this is a valley that shakes me until my teeth chatter if I am honest enough to admit it.

I was completely alone in this sort of valley as I watched the sky, though my children slept in the back seat, and Martin sat beside me. And though my mental image of this path of worry is that it goes straight through a valley, I never reach anywhere on the other side. More often I go wandering around in circles, lost, walking myself more and more deeply into ruts, ruts of my own misery and confusion, my own sadness and darkness. And I am always alone here. You can't take people with you into worry. You can hold the hands of others in sorrow and grief, but this kind of anxiety is a one-person journey. It is lonely and isolating and it is not at all good.

But suddenly, alone in this awful place, someone was there. I can't explain it exactly--except that in my head, I pictured my hands, tightly fisted and white-knuckled, opening, and my worries floating away from me, up from the pit of my own making, over my head, further and further into that real, wonderful blue sky.

Now this is not some kind of hokey visualization--I did not arrange for it to happen (though I believe releasing worries is certainly a choice to some extent), nor did I say HELP ME GOD, though I believe my soul sometimes asks for things despite my own blundering.

But this afternoon I felt Grace lay her hands upon my fists, and just as I coax Beatrix to release some chokable object by stroking the backs of her little knuckles, so did I, in response to other hands, uncurl my own fingers.

The objects of my worries weren't taken care of or resolved, and they did not explode with a puff of smoke--no, I will still struggle with their reality and with my responsibility in the face of such trouble. Sadness remains, but my gnawing, horrible fear was taken away, at least for that moment. The opening, the letting go, is something that must happen every day. But sometimes, like this Sunday afternoon, I feel the breath of joy on my face.

During this time I had been watching the bare hills on either side of the road flash by, seeing the bare spokes of the winter trees. But in the instant after this grace visited me, I focused on one tree, and on that tree's limbs I saw--buds. Buds! Tightly curled, tiny buds on the first day of February! A moment later our car curved around another hill and a whole forest of budded trees spread beneath the blue sky, the tufts of each curled bloom and leaf perfect and visible on the bare brown branches.

This is peace that is beyond understanding. The sorrows of this life--sometimes I feel them dark before me. But I am not alone.