rescue

At the end of service, we pray, a passel of kids of every age, and it feels to me as it used to in the afternoons of my childhood when my dad would stretch out in the living room with his head on a pillow and my brothers and I would come at him from every direction. I remember hovering over Dad’s head, my long, dark hair dangling in his eyes, while he lifted one of my brothers up with one arm and my other brother ran and jumped up on Dad’s knees. We laughed like wild hyenas until one of us got bruised by another and we argued and cried, but either way, Dad held us. At our unified best and our disintegrating worst, Dad held us. When we were sick, Dad held us. He always laid his body down for us; He always had room enough for all of us. I suppose this is what family prayer should also feel like, all of us coming at God from every direction, all of us in awe that we can. He laid his body down so we could come, and immediately as a group at the call to prayer, we begin to move, some opening hands where they stand, some moving forward. I reach for Riley, who has begun the closed-eye sway to my left, because the moment we’re called to pray, I know I have to pray for her.

“I can’t believe this is my last week not to get up early,” she had said this morning–it came out like a moan, and I knew that what she really meant is that she feels the stress of expectations building, that slow, grinding climb up slope; what she meant is that she can feel the rushing plummet, the beginning of that fall, that she feels desperate to stop it.

I stood in her room, pressing her to keep moving, to finish—the dressing, the checking, the gathering—to be ready to go, and the ache of hurry reminded her that very soon, when school starts, this press of time will be at her, pushing every morning. In the summer, this happens once a week, when we’re getting ready to go to worship as we were today, and randomly, when she has appointments. I saw her face fall, and rescue rose in me like a tide. Suddenly I wanted to quit everything that means I have to push her, but I know easier also means emptier, smaller, and I know that’s not what she wants. For me, part of mothering always has been this resistance to a threatening rashness, this stepping back from the precipice of taking matters into my own hands.

“I understand how you feel,” I told her then, passing her the belt she had tightly rolled up like a snail, noticing the careful order of the things she had laid out on her bed. “I know getting ready is hard; we’ll figure it out together. We’ll do what we can to make it easier.”

She had sniffed, trying not to cry, running that belt through the loops of her jeans and tugging hard until the buckle caught against a loop. She jerked jerked jerked it, satisfied at last by that extreme thrice-challenged resistance, as if it conclusively matched her feelings.

So they invite us to pray, and suddenly, recognizing this as the only way to real rescue, I reach for her. I have to reach for her. My mama feet slide over one step toward her, and immediately, she wraps her arms around me. I feel her smile, the lift of her cheek against my chest, even as I start to pray over her, and when I ask God for her peace, if he would just carry the burden that feels so heavy, she exhales a rush of tears, as though praying has given her permission to put down the weight she’s carried. The paralyzed woman feels her unyielding body carried, lifted, settled oh-so-carefully before the healer, and she exhales relief. So we hover there together, Riley and I, our hair hanging loose over the face of God, and beside me, behind me, all around me I hear the murmur of my brothers and sisters dangling from our father’s arms, his knees. Kevin reaches over and touches Riley’s arm, his hand the solid touch of a father’s faithfulness, and she settles against me and slowly begins to wipe the tears from her cheeks.