Saturday

Saturday

He was here and then he wasn't,

And we, suspended in a choking fog

Of grief and disbelief, suffered no suspense

Because we didn't know we were waiting.

All we knew was the silence of loss

After yesterday's utter violence.

It hung in the air of our hiding place

Like the last word spoken in a fight

Hangs in an empty room.

The palpable presence of the shape of pain

Was fast and final, irreversible and irreconcilable.

It is finished meant it was over.

We sat there mute in our disbelief,

Engulfed as our unbelief hardened.

He was here and then he wasn't.

The fullness of everything became inexplicably

The emptiness of nothing but our fear

And the back side of our faith.

All night and all day and all night again,

We sat in the shadow of death,

Numb on the knife edge of hysteria,

Gutted yet stuffed with the fist of the punch in the gut.

We sat in our appalling unfaithfulness, our embarrassing faithlessness,

Feeling justified in forgetting everything he'd ever told us–

Because, in fact, he had told us,

But somehow we of little faith didn't know

We were supposed to wait with him one hour.

We were supposed to wait for him three days.

He was here and then he wasn't,

So we slept in that tomb of a room

In an endless wide-eyed waking sleep with no suspense

Because we didn't know we were waiting.

But then, in the morning, just as he'd said,

He tore back through the veil into time.

The shroud of our misunderstanding

Dissolved like mist with the dawning.

Into our deaf and sightless stupor

Came thunder and lightning and crystal clarity.

Our faithlessness, that stubborn bulwark,

Splintered in the storm surge of his faithfulness.

It is finished meant I have done it!

We were stunned at the shape of him,

So recently with us and then so absolutely gone.

For he was gone and then he wasn't.

And that time we sat suspended

Was instantly redefined

As only that one day of hushed suspense

When we waited for the dawn of forever.

erinrms 4/11/2020

Touch the I Am

Touch the I Am

I sit and scrape sores

                with broken pieces

                of the mile-high granite mountain,

                that massive idol I want moved.

I have no idea

                that the object of my faith will not move

                if it is the object of my faith.

The chipping at it keeps me bound to my mat.

I have no idea that I am only plucking

                at a thread on the hem

                of the cloak of eternity.

I am an orphan baby crying

                for a belly full of milk from a propped up bottle.

The taste of it is heightened on my tongue

                even before I am fed without being nourished.

I do not even know to miss

                the heartbeat thrumming

                through the circle of a mother's arms.

The bleeding woman knew

                if she only touched his cloak, she would be healed.

                                Your faith has made you well.

The centurion knew

                if this man of authority spoke words from a distance,

                he would return home to find his servant well.

                                Such great faith. . .

Jairus knew

                if he threw his dignified self

                at the feet of this man

                who was so criticized

                by his dignified peers,

                he would have his little daughter back

                from the edge of death.

                                Do not fear. Only believe.

The friends knew

                if they tore through that roof

                and fumbled that pallet

                right down on top of the healer,

                they would leave there with a peer

                able to carry his own now-light weight.

                                Your sins are forgiven.

He put on flesh and dwelt here

                to make me crave

                the skin to skin.

He pulls the aim

                of the arrow of my longing

                toward the very heart of God.

He pulls me, too,

                to launch myself after it,

                to elbow through crowds,

                to claw through roofs,

                to clamber over mountains of the stuff of earth.

                                Your great faith has made you well.

He draws me like the path of lightning

                from the ground to the clouds,

                from my earth-bound toe tips through my electrified fingertips.

                                Do not fear. Only believe.

He cuts through space and air and stone

                until I strain only to touch the skin that God put on

                so he could put his hand on me that I might live.

                                Your sins are forgiven.

God, move me when I see only the mountain.

God, hold me when I want only the milk.

God, trail the hem of your cloak close enough for me to brush

                when my arm isn’t quite long enough for me to grasp a fistful

                and when my faith isn’t quite great enough for me to see beyond the bleeding.

God, draw me so that I may know and believe

                and understand that you are He.

God, let me touch the I am.

erinrms 3/31/2020

Being Mom

Being Mom

Being Mom is heart-rending and healing, breathtaking and frustrating. 

Being Mom is arms-wide-open vulnerability,
from first-felt flutter to too-soon leaving to strangely-new normal. 

Being Mom is sometimes arms and knees curled tight around your gut
to keep it all in and block it all out. 

Being Mom is a test of who you really are when no one is looking.

Being Mom is a gulp of grace, too good to be true.

Being Mom is a sustained version of that split-second
when you laugh so hard you're suddenly crying,
or when, crazily, a giggle bubbles up through tears.

Being Mom is so much less about "me" than you'd ever thought it would be.

Being Mom is carrying well what you've been entrusted to carry,
for minutes, months, years, or a lifetime.

Being Mom is the gift of never being alone
because the Lord is your strength,
and because your heart is full even when your arms are empty,
and because there's a crack under the bathroom door wide enough
for persistent stubby fingers to find you.

Erin Socha 7/9/2014

Birth-mothers' Day

I understand today is Birth-mothers' Day, so I thought I would post my thoughts about the four biological mothers of my four sons.

One of you we have met.

One of you we know only from a tiny picture taken my son's lifetime--half your lifetime--ago.

One of you has passed away.

One of you was lost to the same darkness now clouding our shared son.

But all of you, each of you, lost a son when I gained mine.

And I don't know how to thank you.

I'm not sure I've been a better mother than you would have been, so I guess it's not about better.

You gave them life, and I gave them a place to call home.

Which is more important?

There is no "more important."

It is simply how things happened.

As far as I know, you don't know the God I know, so to tell you it was his plan would likely be an offense to you.

You may have been scared, brave, in pain, or not even in your right mind.

I am sorry that you don't know the young men I know.

And I'm sorry that they don't really know you.

If you're wondering, we think about you, we talk about you, we pray for you.

And I'm trying to get it right for both of us.

ErinRMS 5-13-17

Life is Rich

The richness of life is that certain thing. 

--a kitten's purr breath

--a puppy's pepper feet

--April lilacs nowhere yesterday and everywhere today

--hot fudge sauce you almost can't swallow

--tiny fabric softener jammies hugged and folded and waiting

--the smell of the space between your little boy's ear and neck

--the way he mispronounces that one word you secretly hope he never figures out

--a worn out bedtime story

--a grass and blood stained victory

--a cap and gown in a package on the dining room table

--laughter memories that bubble up out of your belly years later

--sweaty-headed summer evenings running with neighbors in new-mown grass

--the ghost of the scent of your grandma's kitchen

--that first sip of coffee

--the ocean depth of an old friendship

--inside jokes that aren't even funny

--mutual laugh lines and shared softness

--the sweetness of being seen and known

--the gold mine of a new friendship

--that moment of knowing

--the realness of the Father

--the fierceness of the Son

--the closeness of the Spirit

--right words in right places at right times

--the swell of a harmony that zings from your heart right to your tear ducts

--finding home and then going there and then finding your way back again

The richness of life is a certain thing.

The richness of life is a thousand things.

erinrms 4/29/2017

Where God is Not

Where God is Not

"'I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.'" --John 16:33

"'My Father's house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.'" --John 14:2-3

"They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might." --2 Thessalonians 1:9

We often envision hell as a red-black cavern licked by flames, a network of underground tunnels echoing with the sinister laugh of a pitch-forked, life-of-the-party cartoon devil, a lake of unquenchable fire. Perhaps these descriptions are true--but only partially. 

Hell is the absence of God. Hell is the utter absence of anything--anything--good.

We speak of hell on earth. Surely we know from experience that in this world we will have trouble. Floods and earthquakes ravage. Disease descends at random. Powerful people prosper. Innocent men die at the hands of others, and vengeful men extract their pound of flesh.

Yet we speak of heaven on earth because we know joy and we know goodness. We have the delight of rainbows, the smell of coffee, the squish of chubby baby cheeks, and the tumbling warmth of golden retriever puppies. We have heroes, first responders, defenders, and givers. We have blue skies to which we lift our eyes and breathe. We have deep, black, diamond-studded skies under which we stand in silent awe. We have oceans to lap away our stress. We have the strength and companionship of friends with hands held out to uplift, arms wrapped around to sustain, smiles and tears to share our human experience. We have places to go, escapes, options, and lifelines. We have the restraining hand of God and the presence of good alive in the souls of men to bring us protection, joy, healing, relief. We have love. We have Christ, a choice in a fraction of a breath, a mere eye-blink away.

I have joked that my personal hell would be an eternal February, or an infinite series of photocopier jams, or an endless day trapped inside a Wal-Mart. . . .

Some know, no joke, that the worst sort of personal hell would be an eternal war zone, or an infinite moment of unspeakable silence in a dark bedroom, or an endless loop of that time the phone rang. . . .

Hell is all lying. All cheating. All perversion. All getting away with it. All violence unchecked.

Hell is innocent bystanders mowed down in cold blood but with no one around sensitive enough to be horrified.

Hell is more oppressive than a thousand middle-school bullies and lonelier than a car running in a sealed-up garage.

Hell is colder than blue-black February and hotter than asphalt on bare feet in August.

Hell is only bad and only more and more of it.

Hell is the absence of God.

Hell is the utter absence of anything--anything--good.

There is no cartoon H. E. Double Hockey Sticks.

And as bad as this world is, it is not hell.

There is no filter in hell.

No restraint.

No relief.

But heaven? Heaven is here, an undercurrent, a swell, a bright vein of eternity tucked deep in dark pockets and glimmering up on the heights.  Heaven is always in reach amidst the happiness and horrors of this life. It is within reach because Jesus Christ, God as a human, came here and extended his hand to us.

Hell is where God is not.

But I have entrusted my soul to the One who has gone to prepare a place for me where the Great I Am is.

ErinRMS 7/8/16

Ho Hoan Kiem image