seizing
Riley can’t respond to me when she’s seizing. She can’t answer my gentle pleas for her to come back, though she tries to turn her head toward me and gets locked there, looking back over her left shoulder, eyes seeing nowhere and then straining beyond even me. I glance at the clock, marking the time, whispering it to myself because otherwise I won’t remember. She seizes and I seize her; I slide my arms around her and wait, calling her name, listening to the throaty click coming from her mouth, ticking away the seconds. You keep them from falling or choking; you watch and listen to see how well they breathe; you can do nothing else. Nothing.
No, not nothing; it only feels that way. I pray, and in moments like these, it’s the natural cry of a little-girl heart: Please, help. I hold Riley in my arms while she’s vulnerable, while she shakes.
There are spiritual seizures too, though we hardly acknowledge them as such. A new friend suffering now with a loss and a grief she could never have imagined or anticipated tells me she’s forgotten how to respond to God. “There are things I know, I mean, I have faith, but I’m having trouble with the feeling part. I just keep repeating the things I know to do, wondering if I’ll ever be able to reconnect,” she says.
I tell her to keep doing the things, to trust that God holds her safe. “He won’t let you fall,” I tell her, feeling the truth of it in my arms. While Riley shakes in my arms, I am held by stronger ones.
It’s Kevin’s voice to which Riley finally responds, resurrecting with a sharp inhale and a drop of her shoulders, the intention finally returning to her movements. Kevin calls her name in that rich, fatherly voice, the tone commanding, and she turns to him. “Mmm?” It’s always been this way with me too–the one voice, the voice of my Father, cutting past everything else.
Riley answers even before she can see or remember anything at all, like a newborn, soothing to a clearer hearing. The beginnings and endings of her seizures happen in slow motion, like the fading transitions of a slide show, quiet and out of sync.
“Can you see me?” Kevin asks carefully. Always this first: the hearing, the seeing.
It occurs to me that God wants the same things for His children, eyes that see and ears that hear, that when Jesus promised recovery of sight for the blind, He meant spiritual sight, too. Returning home, we learn to hear God; we learn to see Him. I think of Job, how in the end he said, “My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you (Job 42:5).” I look hard now: Yes, I see.
“I can see you,” Riley says to Kevin, though I’m not sure she can yet. But then, none of us really know how blurry things once were until we begin to see clearly. In her tone is a question about why-in-the-world he would wonder this.
When Jesus touched the blind man’s eyes, when Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?” The bleary man said he saw people, but they looked like walking trees. So really, he still couldn’t see people (Mark 8: 22-26).
“Do you know where you are?” Kevin asks, gently. First we hear, we see, and then we begin to understand. Where are you? What have you done? God asked Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:9,13), but because they needed to understand and confess, not because God didn’t know.
“I’m at the table,” Riley says, looking around.
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I’m eating dinner.”
She looks down at her plate, at her arms folded carefully in front of her, but makes no move to pick up her fork. And then, as though suddenly remembering, she picks up a nibble with her fingers, drops it into her mouth, and slowly begins to chew. I remember I was praying and begin again, answering the questions of God. I’m with you. I’m trusting you.
“Do you know what happened?” Kevin asks.
“No, I don’t know what happened,” Riley says, but she doesn’t ask either. Maybe she knows without having to be told; she’s been jerked from consciousness before. Kevin and I exchange a glance but stay quiet, knowing that the verbal acknowledgment of the seizure could only distress her and move her to tears. We watch her eat, both of us robbed of any other thought. This must be what it’s like after an earthquake, this sad assessment of damages, this wary alertness for aftershocks. My grieving friend says her family talks around their pain but not quite about it. They watch each other; they react.
“Where’s Zoe?” Kevin asks; it’s the final question in his unofficial cognitive test, because, as it turns out, we were made to look out for our siblings. When fully present, Riley always knows the answer to this question.
“She’s at work right now,” Riley says without hesitation, her voice assured and confident, as though she’s suddenly certain herself that she’s awake. “That’s where Zoe is right now; she’s at work.”
All those extra words. Finally, I remember how to smile.
It will be later, when I’m praying, long past the desperate motherly prayers for her protection, past touching Riley’s cheek with the flat of my hand and marveling over the softness, the warmth, when finally God teaches me again how to give thanks.
How can I give thanks for seizures? I ask, but first He corrects: not for the seizures, but for who He is in the middle of them, for what happens because of Him. Because suddenly, stripped back bare of any idea that we have things under control, we return to being only His children. Because what keeps me safe isn’t even my consciousness or volition, but His arms, sheltering me; His eyes, watching how well I breathe.
