heartbeat {the sound that’s found by letting go}

Most days, the last thing I hear before I lay down the day all empty and relax my weakened grip and let my heart rate slow is the sound of his heartbeat.

It’s the sound that’s found by letting go.

We sleep close; we always have.  And most days, I fit my cheek into a groove all its own against Kevin’s chest and he breathes prayer and I listen to that familiar sound–ba bom ba bom ba bom–and match my breathing to his own.  My breath becomes the prayer he whispers.  And sometimes, I think how empty the world would feel without that sound filling, and then I give thanks that today I got to hear it.  Something about the sound of his heartbeat, those drifting prayers, brings me home from all my venturing and risking and out-pouring.

Some moments empty and others fill—ba bom ba bom ba bom—but Life is bound up in the sum of both.

In the afternoons after school, Zoe flies through the front door like that bird once trapped on our screened porch, flinging its body against so many foreign angular edges, suddenly confronted with spatial boundaries.  It’s as though being home comes as a surprise, before she’s burned all the energy that kept her in motion, all the giddy conversations, the social courage to risk herself.  But she finds me, whereever I happen to be, and presses her forehead against my lips.  And sometimes she bends, carefully placing her ear just below my breastbone as she did so often when she was small, to listen to the sound of my heart.  Ba bom ba bom ba bom.  And then my wild bird stills.  She sighs against me.  She’s home.  All the energy gone will be given again.

It’s an awful feeling to perceive the boundaries of human weakness; to forget however briefly the limitlessness of the One who truly fills; to feel trapped by notions of inevitable entropy.  Sometimes, it’s easy to swallow the weary lie that we’ll never soar again.  It’s tragic to believe that death is all there is.  Trust is the risk that moves us to stillness; to find Him whereever He is; to lay a hollow cheek against the groove of His chest. Trust allows us to rest, bending, pressing an ear below the breastbone of God to hear the sound of His heart, that beat that historically thrums of Resurrection.

They say a child listens to that sound—the sound of her mother’s heart—in the womb. That, and the sound of mother-voice, mother-hunger, and so many random, extraneous, cotton-wrapped sounds all traveling through skin and tissue and fluid.  But these sounds—heart  lungs, stomach (emptied filled emptied filled emptied filled), these sounds anchor Life.  I wonder if it’s His heart, His voice, we hear at the moment of our creation. These are not simply the opportune sounds of science but the forebears of a soul-rooting truth:

Whatever empties He will fill again, so quickly that it never really ever stands empty.  

True Life is bound up in both—the flowing in, the pumping out; receiving and giving; exhale and in; hunger and satisfaction; going out and coming home.  The Truth that the Spirit of God fills, that He satisfies, that He gives, beckons: Be still. Know.  He always, always gives new life. He will always be more than enough.

Empty in the thickness of the afternoon, I curl on my bed and try to rest, pressing a pillow against my chest, just over the place where my own heart beats.  Thoughts, barren and sharp and skeletal, race through my mind, all shadows of the same restless lie that Life leaks until there’s nothing left.  I can’t let go.  I can’t.  But I must.

Be still. Know.

So I do the most powerful, most desperate thing I know to do:  I pray.  I melt into the bed, seeking, listening, yearning for a meaningful sound.  And there, in the silence, I find Him: Ba bom, ba bom, ba bom.  I AM.  Life is bound up in the emptying so that He can refill, the knowledge only of Him.  And the thing I’ve come to understand is that I can’t hear that sound unless I bend toward Him, unless I lay down the day and relax my weakened grip and let my breath slow into a prayer.  I’ve learned that this world is not a safe place for a soul, that I need to listen to that sound, the truth of His ever-Present activity, to survive it.  And so, there in the quiet, there in the Sabbath rest, the moment fills until I can rise again, ready.