On the Fringes

The earth became blurred as the salt tears were pulled up from the depth of my being and the dirt pushed back into my hands. I wailed there in grass & ground, pounded my fist firm into the dust where her body now returns. All I ever knew as normal was ripped from my marrow and forever bleeds with change.

I am just nearly on the fringes of feeling again. 

I think of the weary woman, who knew blood well, she reaches toward His fringes to feel again.

  To touch hope through the threads of Jesus garment. It came with cost. Fear fell back into her grave for her dry soul to feel again. Not only to hope, but for healing to weave in from

those corner pieces of His robe. For He knew blood well too.

It's the reaching that's scary. What if nothing came of the fringes? What if the bleeding stayed until she bled no more? What if reaching means more salted tears, more fetal curled nights or

more blood for her?  for me, a weary woman too?

I've learned a time too many how trauma welcomes, feeds & makes friends with anxiety. How did Jesus reach up with a still soul knowing this very act was taking Him to thorns, whips, blood and spit? Toward agonizing soul cramps & a carved tree created so metal could plunge through skin & bone? To the place where sin would settle upon the spotless, "I AM"

and His own Father would turn away? How?

How did He quiet His soul when HE KNEW what was ahead?

I am striving to reach toward His fringes through a book called, A Thousand Gifts.

Ann Voskamp's words from this book pierce my numb heart,

"Trust is the bridge from yesterday to tomorrow, built with planks of thanks. Remembering frames up gratitude. Gratitude lays out the planks of trust. I can walk the planks-from known to unknown--and know: He holds.  
I could walk unafraid."

 I can reach toward His fringes when I fear and when I hurt with hate in the ungrateful way I choose so often,.... I can reach.

Then its the times like these when my husband turns on Robert Earl Keen and reaches for my hand... he whirls me in the kitchen and we step in two. I flash back to the first time we two-stepped in my  dorm room walls and the fringes are now being held out to me.

I pause.

And I am Thankful.