I simply couldn’t remember this feeling before.
My heart beating uncontrollably fast, my eyes unable to take in the words and contact them to meaning, a chill at my shoulders, my arms.
Never in my youth do I remember feeling anything but able, determined, fearless.
The task I was undertaking was not even one of great importance or significance. It was simply making a hotel reservation. Yet, I just didn’t feel confident in making the decision, and the more I searched, the faster my heart beat, the quicker my breathing became.
I don’t like this feeling. It is foreign to my nature, it is humbling … so humbling.
Then I came across the image (above) of the two children, dressed as angels. The one shoulders back, eyes looking beyond the doorway, knowing where she will go. The other shoulders down, eyes at the floor, fearing to even look at the possibilities beyond the doorposts.
The one, my confident self, the other, my self in that moment.
It seems as though the Psalmist had similar experiences (Psalm 55:4-7):
“My insides are turned inside out;
specters of death have me down.
I shake with fear,
I shudder from head to foot.
“Who will give me wings,” I ask—
“wings like a dove?”
Get me out of here on dove wings;
I want some peace and quiet.”
It would seem as though, perhaps, this Psalmist understood well what it is to have his heart feel as though it might just beat outside of his chest.
Though he doesn’t finds any definitive cure for what ails him, he ends his prayer to God with confidence in the one who hears his voice,
“As for me, I will trust in you.”
That’s it, I will trust in you.
And that is it, then as it is now. The answers and the cures do not always come when we desire them, yet, in faith, we trust in God.
There is peace, even when our bodies, minds, souls and situations are the definition of upheaval, disease, heart-break and fear.
itsawonderfilledlife 