you’ve got me
As Riley and Adam and I run beneath a sapphire sky, I keep time in blooms like lace gently swaying in trees that just weeks ago still stood beseeching, their empty limbs desperately reaching for God. And now, it’s as though creation breathes again for the first time, newborn, naked and filling with life, all the blank and barren spaces suddenly awakening to the testimony of beauty—have life, have it full—right here, in the middle of holy week.
Silken daffodils turn buttery gold in the sunlight, and I think of something Jesus said to Nicodemus in the dark of night, that we must all be reborn.
This is holy ground, the everlasting voice reminds, and not just where I am now in the elegant curve of this living road, but over there, in mounds of sweet, decaying mulch piled high in the neighbor’s yard. In telling God’s story, always the dying things give way to living ones, feeding them their own bodies.
Our neighbor stands in her flower beds, rake in hand, soft bird-blue flannel shirt lightly flapping open at her waist.
I raise a hand and wave as I pass, but it’s Riley who brightly calls hi a beat or two behind me, the sound of her voice flying on the wind, fluttering like a ribbon carried away over our heads and across the sky.
Time comes full, it doesn’t fly or escape or pass away like our words or our lives, and Spring has come, bringing us again to the powerful part of the holy story where the sealed grave stands open and empty, cavernous, like a womb resting after the birthing, when wails herald new life—Mary, searching the garden for the body of Her savior. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning, and where, after the cross, does God first appear again except in the place he first left, in the garden, where living water rushes and fruit grows plump on the vine?
Mary.
He is suddenly right there beside her, right beside me right now, as I run.
I inhale the crisp, chill air, exhaling His name, my breath a prayer, YHWH.
The asphalt blinks beneath my feet.
Beside me also, Adam runs, long and lithe, bouncing and drawing his knees higher just to stay beside me. For Adam, moving and living are the same, and he could outrun us all and never struggle for breath, but we can never convince him to do it. He remains. He looks at me now and grins wild, sun lighting his hair. Meanwhile behind us, Riley slogs slow, her cheeks puffing pink.
At the end of the street, I turn back to close the distance between us and her, and for some reason, the awkward fumble of my feet on the road as we loop around makes me think of going into all the world.
Beside me, Adam turns too, hopping higher still, like it’s all he can do not to run right out of his shoes.
Riley sees us coming and her smile says she’s been waiting for this, for our faces pointed toward her own, for us coming back to retrieve her. That smile, it cuts right through the effort, right across the persevering tightening her face.
This is the thing that’s hard to imagine in the waiting, the relief when love comes back, turning to gather you, how the sufferings of the present time could actually enlarge you, opening you up like something to be swept clean and re-filled.
Those three dark days between the cross and the garden must have felt like such a lonely road, an impossible, painful effort. How Mary’s smile must have looked, when it split her grief.
Teacher!
She had gripped Him, holding on hard, for dear life.
I have wondered which of His many names I will use when He comes back for me, when He turns, and I recognize His face. Savior. Shepherd. Immanuel. The options rise in my mind, as the sweat beads on my forehead.
“Hello, Adam Jones,” Riley says, because Adam, run-dancing now beside her, reaches for her as the joy bubbles over, and she laughs.
“You’ve got this,” I say to her, pumping a fist in the air.
“Yes, I do,” she says, determined, but I can hear how she’s trying to sound sure of it.
Adam says nothing, just hops along beside her, raising his knees even more to shorten his stride, until he’s almost running in place. She glances at him and laughs again, because nothing inspires joy quite like witnessing the constraint, the compression, of a love determined to be with you.
Without words, Adam says, you’ve got me.
And that’s a very different thing, of course, to say.
As once again I begin to move away from Riley, pushing the pace, Adam stays beside her, and again the everlasting voice calls across all time coming—
And they shall call his name Immanuel, which is translated, God with us.
Do not be dismayed, for I will be with you wherever you go.
Fear not, for I am with you.
I will never leave you.
Remain with me as I remain with you.
Behold, I am with you always, even to the very end.
And there Adam will stay for the rest of the run, beside Riley, restraining his own obvious power, grinning wild and reaching out to love her, until we all finally find our way back home.
