come home

The moment I walk in the door, all road-weary and distracted and wondering how it is that pilgrims who don’t have to walk everywhere still come home feeling sore and dusty, I hear Riley praying. Her voice sounds clear, an unbound sound traveling the hallway and down the stairs. As I mounted the steps and turned the key, I had been thinking about how, in modern times, and in the sacred everyday, we have to come home to drop our collected baggage, how out there, we just pick up more and more until it begins to tumble out of our arms. I had been thinking maybe I take the wrong view of the road, thinking about Jesus and his come to me, hearing echoes of a psalm urging me not to be like a horse that must be led by a bit or bridle or they will not come. And then the door swings open, and I hear Riley up in her room talking to God.

I hear phrases, not full sentences, “God Jones,” she says, because everyone she loves goes by Jones. We have our favorite names for God, it takes more than one—Jehovah Jireh, YHWH, Elohim, El-Shaddai, I AM–but Riley being Riley, it’s much more down-to-earth for her than all that. “Would you help,” I hear her say, like she’s placing things in God’s hands, labeling each one, “…wants to eat better…make better choices.” I can tell that she’s petitioning; the sentences sound different than the ones she uses when she talks to him about herself. In that context, she offers God no particular suggestions on the direction he should take. She tells him everything she doesn’t know and doesn’t understand, even the way that his refusal to be put on any sort of schedule feels confusing to her. I hear her say, “I don’t know when,” quite a lot. She puts it all out there, without any question marks. She can be honest with God; she’s certain he knows exactly what to do.

I stand in the entryway, letting burdens fall from my shoulders, setting my handbag just inside the doorway to my office, taking in the gentle tone of Riley’s voice, the unmeasured way she speaks. She might as well be chatting with a friend. I marvel: This child of mine who once could not speak at all, who grunted and pointed and tearfully stretched her trembling arms toward the things she wanted, has learned to pray. She used to wake up in the wee hours of every morning, so frustrated with her inability to communicate that she couldn’t sleep. And now, as an adult, even better than knowing how to ask me, she knows also how to rely on God. God, who has never wanted any of us to be alone, has drawn her into relationship.

Looking around, I can see that Riley was interrupted by prayer: a mug of coffee steams on the round table in the front room, where she usually sits to work puzzles. The light over the table beams; she has pushed a chair back. I imagine that if I reach out my hand, the chair will still be warm with her: right now, it appears to be emptier for having been so suddenly abandoned. Even her phone sits askew on the table, as though so quickly dismissed as to have been lightly tossed aside and left behind.

It’s always harder than it sounds, the decision to stop what you’re doing to come home to God. For centuries, we wandering, errant children have engaged in spiritual practices to find our way to such an intention, and if necessary, the Father will wait for us to understand how desperately we need him. It was David, downcast and bowing low, who wrote, “Send your light and your faithful care, let them lead me…to the place where you dwell (Psalm 43:3).” And when finally we round the bend to home, God runs to meet us.

I touch Riley’s phone with two of my fingers, turning it straight in line with the edge of the table as she normally would, as she will if she returns and finds it so tilted. I can guess that someone texted and asked her to pray, and although there aren’t many things that inspire the self-forgetfulness required to overwhelm Riley’s obsessive routines, talking to God is most definitely one of those things. She runs to him as to a father.

At last, I drift out of hearing, moving on, dropping the last of what I’m carrying along the way. And following Riley’s lead as I leave the city roads behind, I make up my mind to be still and know that he is God.