Sketches: Beyond the Trembling
Her voice trembled. The space between syllables drew long. It was hard to patch the pieces together, to interpret.
Her walk was slow with a cane and her hair had plenty of tousled grey, but she wasn’t that old. Time and gravity hadn’t yet doubled her over. The clinic staff knew her well. They heard beyond the tremors and offered big smiles, jokes about who her boyfriend was. They told her they’d missed her. There was the different that entered the airspace the moment she spoke, but there was also the vibrancy of that bright magenta smile!
How many would stop at the veil of her shaken words? Would you? Would you hear beyond your facebook banter? Would your opinions of movies, politics, theology distract you from the plain reality in the stillness?
The gift stood just behind the trembling. It was there for the finding. That steady smile stood just beyond the patience enough to keep trying to catch the syllables, to set aside the self long enough to play catch with her falling letter blocks – to reassemble them as they fell, to tell her with an ear, with a nod and smile, in a simple act – that she mattered, that she was loved, that she was relevant, that she was received. Listen and encounter the gifts beyond the walls of “different,” and know those gifts abound here, there and everywhere.
And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
It is a deed. It is an action – to listen.
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a Rearranged Life 