The Spirit Speaks: Not in Words, but in Life

I dreamed I was the person I was meant to be.

In the darkest and earliest hours of the morning, after a bout of my omnipresent insomnia, I finally dozed off and had a vivid dream that I was younger, slimmer, and happier than I am. I lived in a house cleaner and nicer than my real house, and I was used to the cleanliness and niceness. In the dream, I wasn’t afraid of God, because I knew that I was doing God’s will. I was going to the doctor for I don’t remember what, and to my surprise, the doctor happily announced to me that I was pregnant. I was thrilled, and I said so. A nurse immediately came in with the ultrasound wand. Moments later I was looking at a perfect little gray and white photo of an embryo about six weeks along, bean-shaped. I was excited. I went and showed it to all my friends– people I didn’t recognize in real life, but they were friends in the dream. They were happy for me. Michael was happy for me. I couldn’t wait to tell Adrienne that after almost fourteen years as an only child, she was going to have a sibling at last.

And then it went wrong.

I started to bleed, right there in the doctor’s office. I ran to find the doctor and get him to make it stop, but I couldn’t find him. I was bleeding worse than I’ve ever bled in real life, bright red all over the floor, panicking, crying, howling wordlessly. If I’d had an interpretation for the gibberish, it might have been “Why don’t you love me? Why don’t you love me? Dear God, why don’t you love me?” 

That was how I woke up– crying. I was in my bed in my house in Steubenville, nearly forty-one years old,  with my teenager sleeping in in the next room, at almost noon on a stifling July day, in a country that’s falling into ruin, in a world that’s burning to death. Internally, I was still howling. “Why don’t you love me?”

Well, why should He love me? How could God love me when I couldn’t do anything right? I can’t even sit through a whole Mass, because the religious trauma is too severe. I pace around the foyer, and I sit outside on the porch when even the foyer isn’t far enough away. I desperately want to go to confession, but I can’t possibly do it because I have a panic attack and go mute when I’m alone with a priest. I cringe and close my eyes if I have to walk past a Franciscan in a brown or gray cassock with a three-knot belt. I couldn’t homeschool a brood of seven perfect children and teach them all the Faith. My faith shattered years ago. I might as well be Satan himself.

I found my glasses and stumbled downstairs to check on the garden.

There was Charlie the traumatized cat on the porch. Charlie has completely stopped biting human beings. She doesn’t even bat my arm with claws out anymore. She doesn’t snuggle on my lap either, but she likes to run figure eights between my ankles and rub her head against my shoe. When I go out to inspect the garden, she follows at a distance, cautious. Then, suddenly, she bolts out in front of me and hides under the lilac bush or on top of the porch rail. She consents to be petted, not too much, then darts away to watch me again. And just as I think she’s left the yard, she comes back for another pet.

If the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep was herding cats, what would He do with a cat like Charlie?

If a battered and traumatized stray with the tip missing from one ear bolted off from the sheep fold, the shepherd couldn’t carry her back on his shoulder. She’d tear Him to bits.  He’d have to be terribly patient. He’d have to not glance at the cat but walk forward, not too fast, pretending He was busy with something else, and give the cat plenty of time to follow. He’d have to be careful not to trip if the cat darted forward between His legs and made for the lilac bush. He’d have to pet her when she managed to hold still and love her for what she was, instead of demanding she be somebody else.

The garden was a jungle, all chaos and life. The very tallest sunflowers were bending over to make a living tunnel. Underneath, the pumpkin vines overran the earth. The summer squash were still yielding and the paste tomatoes had just begun to ripen. The corn was getting tassels, slowly, in places it was difficult to reach up and hand-pollenate.  The goldfinch and the cardinals who like to pick at the sunflower seeds preached at me from the light pole in the alley, safely away from the cat. Nothing was as I meant it to be, but it was beautiful in its way. That is the way that the garden always grows.

After I finished in the garden, it was time to meet up with the Baker Street Irregulars. I’d promised to take the mother and the two little girls to the pool in Mingo Junction for the whole afternoon. They sprinted up to the car in their pink swim suits, eager as if I had showed up in a private jet to take them on vacation.

The disabled one with the extra chromosome is three years older, but nearly six inches shorter, than her neurotypical sister. The neurotypical sister is polite and gentle, with blond hair and pink sunburned cheeks. The disabled one is brash and impulsive and ghostly pale with dark hair. You wouldn’t know they were sisters, except that they have the same light eyes. I’ve started to call them Snow White and Rose Red. Rose Red has been staying home all summer, lonely because her teenage siblings are visiting family out of state. She is excited for summer day camp next month, and school after that. Snow White has been in the day camp at her special school from morning until noon all summer; they make all kinds of arts and crafts like the tissue paper flower she gave me to hang on my wall. The girls chattered about their schools and day camp as I drove through the perpetual construction on Route Seven.

Snow White and Rose Red are not afraid that God doesn’t love them. They are not afraid of anything.

The pool was noisy and crowded. Above was the firmament, bright blue and boiling hot. Below was the water, bright blue and cool as September. All around were the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, jagged, imposing, impossible, inevitable, ever ancient, ever new.

“I’m not going home!” said Snow White, grinning from ear to ear as she splashed with Rose Red. “I’m never going home again! I’m going to stay at the pool forever!”

I swam and waded back and forth in the water, worrying. Praying, but not well.

As usual, there was no answer– not in words or feelings, not really. Only in life.

Only the Father, so loving or so capricious that He created Snow White and Rose Red, Charlie and Adrienne and the Appalachian mountains, and me.

Only the Son Who saw Satan fall like lightning from the sky, and Himself descended to make it right.

Only the Holy Spirit, who plays on the waters of the deep.

Maybe the Holy Spirit was speaking after all.

Maybe She was telling me,  “You are allowed to be happy. You are allowed to be happy. My daughter, my daughter, you are allowed to be happy.”