The Way of the River

The closet is filled with neatly hung personalities. I select the silky tunic and pull it over my head, cinching it with trepidation and expectations for the day. The list of can not forgets run through my head as I step before the mirror. Weave my hair in braids of minute detail and a need for control. Replay the last interaction. Analyze the details. Swipe my face with toner and a desire to conceal myself just enough. The mascara adds to the effect. I finish the look with the blush of an athlete stepping up to the starting line or a dancer under the masked lights of an anticipated stage.

What would it be like to step out bare faced?

The voice. The whisper. Challenging my daily ritual.

“It would suck, probably,” I think. I’m barely meeting the bare minimum as it is. Barely passable in this polished china case.

What if you uncinched the tunic? Let your hair run wild?

A memory plays in my head. Of a different time. A different way of being. Of the time I stripped the clothing and the makeup and the routine and waded slowly into the river. The gentle current directing me. The backpack and clothes sitting in a disgarded pile on the ever growing distant shore.

The stakes are higher now. The backpack heavier, more precious. I have more to lose. More to gain.

There’s an ache beneath my sternum for the feeling of that river. What it was like to trust in the intrepid pull of silvery currents directing my movement in a sequence of fate. The trusting of the unknown. The wonder in the unfamiliar.

I pull my awareness back to the painted face staring in the mirror. Take stock of the rings beneath her eyes. The puffiness in her skin. The quiet pleading in her pupils.

It takes a toll this performance. This subtle lingering not enoughness. What would it be like to get back in the river? Cold, probably. The running currents never offer comfort. Only to be alive. Shockingly alive.

Trust me.

“Well, that’s the question isn’t it,” a snort, an air of exasperation. How? How do I do it?

Every time I put down the backpack, I pick it back up. Without a thought. I’ve gone as far as to strip down to my knickers and put my feet in the water. And as I observe the birds and the trees and ripples around my ankles, I imperceptibly begin the process of dressing. Of drying. Of refitting the pack onto my shoulders.

How do I create a muscle where there isn’t one? How do I bring awareness to something that pulls the puppet strings of my own subconscious? I seem to only experience it in hindsight, the rearview offering what my present mind cannot.

Practice. Daily. Come sit with me and I’ll show you.

“Oh f*ck. Anything but that.” Anything but the quiet discipline of slow progress. Ask me to blow my life up, leave a million dollars on the table, go streaking at the Super Bowl. Anything but the golden monotony of being consistent. Of incremental change that is anything but grand.

Tears well in the mascaraed eyes staring back at me. There it is. Under it all. The true fear. To sit with God and be known.

Known for all my misgivings. My utter humaness. My not enoughness.

For it to be quiet. For it to be simple. For it to have been under my feet the whole time.

I reach for a baby wipe as the makeup remover never made it back on the shopping list. Let the awareness reverberate as I wipe the unfamiliar face in front of me, watch it begin to return home.

I leave the mirror and strike a match above the candle. Sink to my knees and watch the flame slowly dance in the imperceptible waves of air around me. And begin the process.

A knowledge of God is not enough. A memory bank of Bible verses and godly principalities won’t save me. The lesson sits in nightly candlelight, waiting to teach me the way of the river.