INTERVENTIONS

I remain awake for it, in great anticipation of what could be there, tucked within the moments of my everyday life.

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The sitting down to write this comes with revelation that I have had a surprising number of encounters with the supernatural. This one, above all the others, lives in me like some permanent alteration of my being, like a facelift on the inside.

He was beautiful. Not within the confines of conventional definition. Not in some ordinary way.

I remember there were splotches of white paint crawling down his muscular arms and layering over the deep veins in his worn hands. And I remember my curiosity at his unashamed countenance that placed the priority of how he looked, far below what he had come to accomplish.

Only two hours separated daddy and me from my mama’s bedside and this quaint little bistro that offered the cocoon of normalcy on an anything-but-normal Saturday—

To remain breathing while she was not,

We were there. But we were lost.

This is when I noticed him, amid this impossible, quiet grief, in the company of dignified strangers he wedged his way in. Covered in the residue of white paint and dressed in a white tee shirt and splattered white painter’s overalls he walked directly to my daddy, his happy eyes fixed on the man at the bar with the downcast gaze.

 He was unusual, out of place. Of course, I noticed. How could I not?

Sitting on the empty stool beside us and slipping his arm around Daddy’s shoulders he asked, “How are you doing on this beautiful day?” And for the next series of tear-filled minutes, he listened to a freshly minted widower’s story of love and loss.

Of all the parts of this story, here is the one I want you to remember longest and best—

In the motion of neck turning and then looking back,

The man who once was seated next to us, was not.

 Do you wonder of a Heaven, or even how far away from us it is?

There was no hesitation in me to comprehend what to make of this.

Our crowded lives. Our cluttered minds. There is no dispute of all the exquisite things we dismiss.  

We were gutted. Empty and wide open. And He came in.

Isn’t that the miracle of loss?

 This day, of white overalls and streaked-white across his chin, was living illustration of what Divine love can do.

Oh, to slow and take it in.

Oh, to seek with all we are.

Oh, to know with no doubt.

Am I silly to believe my mama’s faith and love for her husband ushered this painter of hope to our sides? Am I greedy to seek this intervention not only in the needful things but in the course of my every day?

Or is this precisely what He wants us to crave?

I think the connection [between Earthly and Heavenly plains] is ours to make.

I think the gift is ours to take.

Look up from your downcast eyes. What you hope for does not exist within some distant story.

It imbeds itself in the center of what you are enduring. And it endures with you.

This intervention. This infusion of belief. It comes just when you need it. In a form you can recognize. It is not lost on me that my hope came dressed in the cloak of restoration, something I’m intimately familiar with.

That twinkle in his eye as He approaches? It is a playful knowing that everything is going to be alright.

The gifts are endless for those who do not dismiss,
who train their mind to follow their head when it turns,
to register what is seen, 
and then see it with the heart.

 Notes:

I was in the midst, this morning, of writing about God-sized interventions in our lives when someone I love knocked on the door. When I write I always put a figurative wall around me no matter where I am. But this morning, that wall disappeared as I became aware of just how much she needed someone to talk to. Over the next two hours my words were challenged. Am I really the in-the-moment woman I proclaim to be?

Intervention has so much more power than Interruption.

If you’re experiencing the frustration that comes from having your agenda “altered” time and time again, I invite you to see the unexpected moments that come to you as messages that you need to hear…whether you’re ready or not.

I love that my Creator believes in me enough to entrust me with the unexpected moments that completely change my perspective and sometimes the entire trajectory of my life.

ABOUT THE IMAGE: This is my hand covered in paint, taken several years ago during one of my home renovations. In so many ways, it’s iconic to who I am and what I love. Of course, it’s no accident that the intervention on the day my mama died came in a form I can relate to over everything else. In His image…the Builder of Lives.

For more about my obsession with paint and interventions of the “interior” kind enjoy: And So We Paint