A Deep Life

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Every season of my life, music tilled me. Music carried me by the scruff of the neck, and I survived. I healed because of music. It tore down deep, debrided the wound. I grew with music, stretched, ached- and sound thrived, eventually, through the tired and terrified whisper of a small, quiet voice, and I sang. And I lived. 

I came across Bebo Norman in my CCM years of high school. His music held me through the angst of 18 to 25 for sure. I can listen to a piece and remember everything from that time, every pain, every question, every hope and joy. I lived the words, and faith walked the sidewalks of Macon and Beverly, South Hamilton, Augusta, Georgia, and New York City. Each day my footstep made its claim and took its place upon the hill, at times in the face of excruciating pain, pain possibly seen by no one but God.

And that's how I knew God, every day. All day- each second of pain or hope or fear or triumph. It was supernatural. It was personal. It was mine, and I lived, for better or worse. I lived, learned, hoped, helped, and grew.

I can't believe I ever lost him, God that is.

Well, lost sight- I lost understanding of truth. I don't suppose we can actually lose God. In fact, I know we can't. I don't think I ever intentionally tried, but I certainly let him have an extremely good piece of my mind, honestly. 

He took it. Apparently God can handle me. Apparently, God created me. Apparently God loves me, more than I could know. And so God never lost me- couldn't. Herein lies an entire thesis of God's character, a theological treatise about why everything that was ever all wrong was incredibly somehow actually right. The bitter stung. The loss ached, but the life came. It always came. 

I've learned through personal experience that my ability to explicate or internalize truth is not that which saves my life or watches over it, thank goodness. Truth exists even when I deny it or cannot face it.

And plenty can't face it. Wills are hard to break, especially when they are almost right. I keep thinking of Jesus looking at the man and saying "Why do you call me good? No one is good but One, that is God." And then I think of the man. Perhaps he wondered, "I just need to know if it's enough, yet." That's a hard thing; to let go of it is the illusive expanse between sorrow and hope, the birth of joy during suffering. To cling to getting there ourselves is a battle we cannot win, and often cannot quit. Again, but God. 

"Because after all, we know we all
Are after all the same things
But for the sun no rain would fall;
And it burned him up and turned him mean
This fire that kills me, it's deeper still...
...deeper still."

"It's love that heals me. It's deeper still. It's deeper still."

"Tonight I rose up with the moon
And looking down from high above
I saw a world carved and confused
Into valleys deep in need of love
And falling down all thick with grace
Heaven's cloud of mystery
Was filling every empty space
Down to the depth of human need."

All quotes from Deeper Still, by Bebo Norman