My Ragamuffin Heart

The sun is sifting down below the up-thrust of pines across the cotton field. Silver clouds stretch greyhound-shaped across a pure blue sky, trying to outstrip the dusk that will overtake them with a Midas touch and spin them into gold threads. I have spent the afternoon reading aloud a good novel to my younger sister while she practices drawing portraits. My seven year old sister, Grace, was baptized today with ten others. After church, my cousin and I went out to lunch--the cousin I scarcely see anymore, since we both took up the professional life. He paid, though he knew I didn't expect it. For dinner this evening, we have leftovers from Dad's birthday: the most delicious sort of leftovers. My trench-coat smells of adventure, or maybe it is only last night's bonfire.My sisters and I have saved our portion to eat at another bonfire tonight: sourdough bread toasted over open flames, pork tenderloin crisped over a wood fire. Perhaps my cousin will come over. Perhaps we'll have one of the Good Old Times. It's cold tonight and October is reckoning. Yesterday, I saw one of my girlhood friends and her new, velvet baby. In three short weeks my beloved older brother is marrying my best friend.

Grace abounds; overflows; caresses; shouts.

But am I content?

I wish I could say yes, without telling a lie. I am thankful for all these blessings--recounting them now, I am ashamed at the discontentment blotting this beautiful, autumn page. But if I am going to be entirely honest--and how am I to be credible if don't?--than I have to tell you that my heart is weak tonight. Tonight, my heart looks at all this and thinks, "Yes, it's very nice, but it's not what I want most." What do I want most? I hesitate to ask myself this question because I know my answer and I know the right answer, and they're not the same. Not tonight.

Tonight, what my heart wants most is a husband.

There. I said it. Be shocked if you want, or agree with me. Tell me that isn't where I will find my fulfillment. I know this. I know this deeper than deep down in my soul. But for all the knowing, it doesn't mean that I don't want it. And the reason I want it so badly, is this: my heart doubts He can do it. My heart doubts that God can overcome the details of my desires vs. current realities. My heart doubts. I've finally said it. I laugh, like Sarah, at the idea that God could do it. I tally up on burned fingers the number of ways in which I'm not good enough, pretty enough, clever enough, talented enough, attractive enough, busy enough, traveled enough, holy enough to even come close to thinking there's a chance I'll win the heart of any man, if I knew of a man whose heart I wanted to win. It isn't easy to write this here for all of you to see. I would much rather put a brave face on, be the sensible woman I usually am, and say I'm perfectly content with my admittedly beautiful life. Tonight, that's not where my heart is.

But there's this thing about hearts, a secret I learned by rote a long time ago. A secret whose import I haven't bothered to understand until now. Now I think I understand what it really means. Funny, how seven words can change from meaningless to meaning so much in an unholy moment, made holy by the revelation. "The heart is deceitful above all things." Deceitful. Lying. Cheating. Unfair. Dishonest. My heart is all these things. Tonight, my heart tells me that God can't do it. GOD. The same God who made this entire universe, who, this March, turned an unsuspecting me from unemployed to having a precious job, who has acted like the best sort of romantic and caused two of my favorite people to fall in love with each other, who has given me the gift of having a house in a quiet corner of the country where I can see the sunrises and sunsets each day and the stars like crystal-shards at night. God can't do it. Or He won't. Or can't and won't. God isn't going to do it, my heart says. It thinks it is right.

My head knows this isn't true. My head hardly ever wavers from a circumspect course. But heads can't feel and hearts can. They can hurt like hell. Hearts can throw back their heads and howl and blur away the blessing from the moments, steal the breath, beat the temples with an almost physical blow. Hearts can speak louder than any thought, and their words are poison. A head, in this situation is useless. My soul is another matter. It is quiet tonight. So quiet, I almost worry I have killed it in my perversity of spirit. Thank God that's theologically impossible. "What's up, Soul?" I wonder. "Can't you crush my heart with some grand dose of spiritual common sense? My head's on your side, but my heart's over here standing on a chair with his head thrown back, shrilling. My ears hurt. My body hurts. My heart hurts."
Still, my soul is quiet. It's a little unnerving. I go out to the front porch to breathe in the sunset, breathe out the poison, breathe in the chill air, breathe out the doubt and pain. I bring my heart, kicking, screaming, digging its fingernails like bloody half-moons into the tops of my hands. "God," I whisper. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I my heart doesn't believe you. I need you to take this and show me how to quieten it. Show me how to believe again. I am so sorry."
And then my soul lumbers to its feet at last--I feel relieved, as if I really had killed it--and puts a heavy, clumsy hand on my heart. Heart, fitful, fretful, fractious child that it is, kicks a little. Screams once or twice. Bites the hand. But the hand is calloused in the best way, accustomed to the throbbing of my deceived heart. My soul remembers, suddenly, the set of words that have fed me this weekend:

How precious is your lovingkindness,

O God!

Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your wings.

They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house,

And You give them drink from the river of Your pleasures.

For with You is the fountain of life.

In Your light we see light.

(Psalm 36:7-8)

The clouds like greyhounds have given tongue to the dark and fall in a heap of golden glory. A long slide of silver light reaches toward where I sit on the cold bricks. My heart is still yelling like an infant, but the tantrum feels strangely futile because of my soul's hand. I taste the words of the Psalmist, say them aloud, bring the promise to my God. I have put my trust under the shadow of His wings, whatever my heart tells me to the contrary. He has promised that I will be satisfied with the fullness of His house, that I will drink from the river of His pleasures, that His fountain is life. He will keep His promises. This I know with the full fury of my soul.
Why, then, won't my heart feel it too?
Why does my heart persist in its shameful refusal to believe?
Then I realize why. Because it has withdrawn into a dark corner, wrapped a blanket of dishonesty about its shoulders. This time, the dishonesty is the very secret I just spilled: that my heart doesn't believe. In the darkness, it can't believe. It can't possibly see the light, because the only way in which it can is through the light of the one it has chosen tonight to distrust. As I whisper these words and force my heart to stand in the truth of the promise, I feel the silver of that sky slide into my soul and shore up its faith. My ears are ringing, and I realize it isn't from an increased pitch of my shrieking heart...actually, my heart is muffled by something strange: a flood of joy. It rushes and foams with the voice of many waters and I can barely hear my heart under the sound. If I look for that ridiculous, lying heart, I know it is still hammering its fallacies, trying to work its way to my steadfast soul. But my soul has been fed by the light, both figuratively and literally. My soul is in fighting trim. It feels like laughing. And just to annoy my ragamuffin heart, he leaves his hand there, just a little longer.

"When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the Rock that is higher than I."