You Know Just Where I Keep My Better Side

I can't help but ponder and ask when I look around as I press on with my winnowing aspirations, "How did it get to this without me intervening before now?" Well, there are lots of reasons, most certainly. And as I've said before, some are justifiable while others are just excuses. I'm not one to roll around in regret or search for a place to thrust blame. A lot of times, it just is what it is. But sometimes something(s) happens and you're able to pinpoint a precise place in time who's events helped bring you to where you currently find yourself.

The days, weeks, and months following Little Big Man's birth is just such a time for me. I literally woke up within hours of his birth to find my realities completely unraveling in the most painful and horrifying ways, in the midst of the sacredness and miraculousness of new life. I developed a fear-induced paralysis on so many levels; physically, spiritually, relationally, functionally. Even the colors the world was painted in seemed dimmer and more foreboding, full of forms and shadows I could live a thousand lifetimes and hope to never see again.

Depression and anxiety are such villians.

It's funny. We found books that we used to read excerpts from everyday at the breakfast table before the dark days came. I had forgotten all about them. As I work at this winnowing I am finding some really good systems that were started, but look as abandoned as all the graded neighborhoods that sit empty of completion in a down economy. I forgot all about them. I found pictures that I intended to hang hundreds of days ago, but couldn't get around to it. I forgot all about them. It's funny.

The dark days are gone. Still hard times, sure. But NOTHING like those days that in hindsight look almost like negatives of a stack of photographs; eery and dark and hard to make out. Now I look at those things I forgot and have, in a lot of instances, just picked back up to start. We'll read the books again. I'll complete the systems. As of this week, the pictures are hung.

What I know about the dark days, what they do (if you will let them) as they sift out from under you everything you know and trust and rely on, is reduce "it" all down to the realest of realities. It was a pit. It wasn't bottomless, but bottom was very low. But what I found at the bottom was My God. Really.

If I had not had the sifting and the pit, I don't think I would ever know how real God is. I do not speak metaphorically when I say He was there. He was. Even with the love of my family and friends, He was the only one in the pit with me. Painfully, He didn't grab me up and shoot us out of the pit like a rocket, to set my feet again on something that felt solid. That's all I wanted Him to do. But He wouldn't.

But He sat with me. With everything in me, I swear to you that He held me and He cried with me. I couldn't feel it. I didn't trust it. But now, NOW, I know it.

So I can pinpoint where a lot of the cleaning up and cleaning out neglect started. Okay. Good. So we'll move on from there. Days are so full with joy and laughter and silliness and play with all my us-es, and especially my Little Big Man. He's my boy.

But I hear a song (as I so often do), and as I hear the words unfold in my memory I realize it's no coincidence that it floats in my mind. It's a love song. It's intimate, speaks of things only two who've shared the deepest of emotions can say.

I hear it often. I can hear He and me exchanging the lines back and forth with each other like a dance. Sometimes He sings, other times it's me. I think I can see that we both have tears. The bittersweetest, most holy of tears.

The days are never the dimmest they once were. But everyday still has it's dimming, even as the sun finds the other side of the globe and the moon acts as beacon.

Come the night He could be my confidant...

This old house is falling down around my ears
I’m drowning in the river of my tears
When all my will is gone you hold me sway
I need you at the dimming of the day

You pulled me like the moon pulls on the tide
You know just where I keep my better side

What days have come to keep us far apart
A broken promise or a broken heart
Now all the bonny birds have wheeled away
I need you at the dimming of the day

Come the night you’re only what I want
Come the night you could be my confidant

I see you on the street in company
Why don’t you come and ease your mind with me
I’m living for the night we steal away
I need you at the dimming of the day
I need you at the dimming of the day