FACE DOWN
The soreness that begins at the top of my hips and radiates to my knees cannot be attributed to days nestled in the leather of a worn saddle, though I long for the familiar company of wheat and plains stretching out as far as my eyes can see.
Growing up in Kansas was as close to my own pioneering adventure as the journey another young girl endures I am enraptured with on the screen.
Today, I violate every self-imposed principle of living in snow and scurry across the ice with my feet lacking the backup support of an attentive brain. I remember reaching for air as if to make contact with some imaginary handle before landing precisely and directly on my tailbone. Ron finds me, face down in the ice, just seconds before backing over me with the brawny wheels of the jeep.
Now, I begin weeping at the part when the young cowboy who, having defended his straw-haired young bride, is shot off his steed and gasps for his last breaths laid out on unfamiliar prairie.
What strikes me is not the violence of the scene, but the fierce urgency with which his companion rushes to his side. No hesitation, his body is rolled over so that his eyes can meet those of another kindred to his suffering and the majestic blue of a clouded sky.
Face Down, we lay. More days than we can count. We taste the dirt. See only darkness. Sense the movement of unidentifiable crawling things that terrify beyond what we can bare.
How many of us face the death that we dread over little minutes collected over lifetimes of sorrowful days? How many of us have stepped over others with the vacant stare of nothingness in their eyes?
Face Down, we are able to hide our dread, our disappointment, our failures from someone else’s recognition of who and what we really are.
Face Down, we are able to ignore the hurt, the hunger in another, the reflection of ourselves in their uncomfortable, needful gaze.
His first and final words at being rolled over are, “I loved her.” I think what perfection the writer’s intention is. Love is our final remembrance…or at least I imagine with all of my being that it is.
I can tell you that, ice excluded, there have been a thousand times I have felt the dankness of the earth creeping into my damp eyelashes, seeping into my soul. “Leave me here,” my silence protests. And then there appears my Maker, the impression of His gaze behind my eyelids like the darkness of a moonless night.
In the shadows He comes and rolls me over…To face Him. To face my life. To face myself.
We may fail one another; we may miss the signals that someone we love or may not know is grinding dirt between their teeth. We may step over the down-trodden and broken hearted.
We may stumble over the beaten flesh of one who most-often pretends a strength that pulls away from a helpful word or soft embrace.
But the Almighty, the one who sets the whole of all of it into motion, day by day, star by star,
He will not leave us terrified and bewildered, lost and alone.
I hear his footsteps, like boots set down assuredly in tall grass, running to me like the wind.
And then he rolls me over to face truth, my life, Him.
“Love is what I remember,” I whisper to Him.
Then comes His gentle assurance, “Love is all there is.”
NOTE: My friend whose prayers are like a relentless fever says “face down” is her favoured posture when speaking to the Lord. Does she hide in shame in refusing to return His gaze? No, I don’t believe she does. The reverence of being prostrate comes less from falling short and more from an unattainable disposition of being equal to our Creator. Sometimes we drop to our knees in those moments when, through grief or despair, we are simply unable to stand. And then there are those times when we stand and search the heavens for even just a glimpse of the One who gave us breath. When the end comes, I imagine myself taking the posture of how I most often approach how I live… that is, facing it, facing Him, head on.