follow the leader
Out on the run in the early morning, the light barely an hour old, Kevin and I wake up to the day together, having just come awake again to God, our blank hands turned up, open and empty. For years, it’s been like this, the two of us sipping our coffee in the predawn, desperate to see by Him, because we know we’re otherwise only blind, peering around the planks blocking our perspective. Winter chaps my cheeks. There’s an old hymn, faintly tinkling on an antique piano somewhere. I can hear it in my memory, like it’s breezing by on a quiet wind:
He leadeth me, O blessed thought…oh, words with heavenly comfort fraught…
I have two layers pulled down over my ears as a shield against the cold, muffling the world, which is a good thing, since my exposed cheeks have gone numb. I feel it keenly, how I could use some of that heavenly comfort, hearing my own hungry thoughts quite clearly now without the distraction of everything coming alive around me. It’s like I’m swathed in cotton; I can’t even hear my own feet thudding against the asphalt, and certainly not that dog, mouth yapping wide, now running along the invisible fence bordering the neighbor’s yard, his feet skimming the yellowing grass; nor any of the birds that must certainly now be chattering about their breakfast from their invisible beds in the trees; and not the cars hurrying by like the street’s on fire.
There are times, you know, when all the layers between us and the world, the walls we build against the cold, just about muffle everything, leaving us deaf to anything but our interior lives, the breath rushing in and out, the chill setting into our bruised toes. We curl our hands tightly closed, and withdrawal feels not only safe and necessary but even healthy, at least for a while. Ages ago, I read in a book that we should not be alarmed when for a season we become numb to emotion, whether certain kinds or particular extremes or pervasively all, because our bodies know when to shield us from feelings we’re too altogether weary to carry. The only thing is to acknowledge the muting and to recognize the limitations imposed on our perspective.
You may wonder if it’s smart to brave the frigid world at all, to keep running along a waking road when you can’t quite hear, and I will tell you that it wouldn’t be, not really, if I really was running alone. But I’m not. And here’s another thing: I never really am.
This morning, Kevin jogs several yards ahead of me, because he’s faster and his legs are longer, and our sprint intervals launch him out in front, and I’m thinking, as I look at his long, lean back, how good it is to be led by love.
There are snatches of Paul’s letters to the churches fluttering in my mind, like pages scattered on that same wind still carrying the round sound of that old hymn, like marching music. So, I say, walk by the Spirit…keep in step with the Spirit…and walk in the way of love.
The Way of Love runs straight through scripture like the flat, ancient roads they used to smooth for human kings, only this one set by the King of heaven for the singing and dancing homecoming of those who trust in Him, the Way, to lead the Way. How good it is to be led by Love to love in the way of love, and this the only everlasting safety.
Because of years of union, of knowing beyond the limits of the mind, there are things I trust explicitly: Kevin’s alert awareness about where I am in relation to him; his protective love over me, closing all the space between us; his choice to feel the cold, sharp bite of Winter more acutely than I so that he can hear for the both of us.
In one of David’s Psalms, he writes a remarkable truth, a kind and awesome grace, God knowing him, David, so well God is alert to his movements, his thoughts, even the things David intends to say before he says them. I look behind me and you’re there, then up ahead and you’re there, too—your reassuring presence, coming and going.
There is the possibility of a union that keeps us safe even when we can’t hear or see or trust our own perceptions about anything, when we know that the seeing and hearing we think we can do on our own on our best days isn’t worth our reliance, not really. The wise writer of Proverbs urged us not to lean on our own understanding but instead to acknowledge God, and recovery of sight for the blind comes in the New Testament only through the healing touch of Christ. Unless we see by Him, we’re only blind. Unless we hear by Him, we’re only deaf.
And in a manner of speaking, I am hearing this morning on the run, too, just not by way of my own ears so much as by way of Kevin’s.
I train my eyes on my husband’s shoulders as we near an intersection with a blind hill in one direction and a blind curve in the other, watching him slow a little, watching him listen for both of us. He glances back at me, probably to assess the distance between us, and then runs on, making an unusually wide turn to the right, veering left in an extreme arc before committing to the direction I already knew he’d be heading. So, I follow, mimicking his path as closely as I can, keeping in step, because I know my own muffled hearing, and I know I can’t see as clearly as he can from up ahead, and I trust him. It isn’t until I’m halfway through the intersection that I see the car coming a little too quickly, hurtling—all hurry and maybe the driver’s eyes are even on his phone–around that blind curve, and I understand then what I could not have anticipated on my own, being neither seeing nor really hearing, that the wide arc Kevin made to the left gave the driver plenty of time to look up and see me, to slow down well before we were even close to each other.
The Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need, David the poet-king once wrote, because he knew what it is to be led by love, how you can know you’re half deaf and mostly blind and know you’re only safe as long as you know how to follow the leader who is love, who loves you enough to lay down and be your Way through.
I have this recurring nightmare that I’m driving but can’t see and can’t stop driving, and I just keep thinking from deep in the hole of sleep, I need to stop I need to stop I need to stop, but driving on, waiting to go careening off a cliff or into another car. Waiting to hear a scream, maybe my own. I can feel it rising with the panic, with the knowledge that I am the blind leading the blind, that as long as I keep going blind, I can’t avoid hurting others, hurting myself. I know that way leads to death.
Just now, as the driver looks up and the car slows and I am safely on the other side before he even reaches me, I am thinking this is the opposite of that horrible dream, this safe leading, this knowledge that I am blind and deaf and led by One who sees and hears everything, and I am thinking that the recurring nightmare is a kindness really, the dream always turning me back to that old Proverb about not leaning on me but acknowledging God, to that old hymn, still tinkling through my mind.
He leadeth me, O blessed thought…oh, words with heavenly comfort fraught…
I don’t have to run blind and I don’t have to drive blind and I don’t have to be blind because I’m not left seeing through these broken eyes or hearing through my own half-deaf ears but led by Love, always out in front, back behind, all around me. Not a scream but a laugh– Freedom for the oppressed and recovery of sight for the blind, indeed!—escapes my lips, all grace, spreading out the Way in front of me.
