When I was a kid I remember messing up real bad and since my dad had just become a Christian he told me that I should go to my room and pray to God.
So with tears in my eyes I went to my room, into my closet and in the darkness
I knelt down and right before I fell asleep I cried out to God
And I asked for Wisdom because I was tired of fucking up
I didn’t make a deal with God, I didn’t offer him anything in return
Maybe I should have
But I keep checking this inborn compass or mirror that I call my soul for some kind of evidence some indelible mark that God has come through.
When I was older I heard that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.
Well, I’m still trying to figure out what that means
Because I am afraid of sharks and spiders and splinters
But I have no fear of the Lord
Maybe I should
Or maybe the fear of the Lord means something different then spiders and sharks
Maybe what it means to fear the Lord is to respond to Him…to make a choice
just as fear requires some kind of response…like running or hiding.
Not long after I read that death is the beginning of knowledge
When I read that I didn’t know what that meant
And since I didn’t feel like I understood what it was to fear the Lord or respond to him I tried to understand death. If I couldn’t have Wisdom maybe I could have Knowledge.
So, I took a job as a caregiver for Luther, a man who wasn’t longed for this world.
Five days a week at about eight in the morning I would wrap my arms around this man and lift him up out of his bed and put him in his wheel chair. This one time after I put him back in his bed he said, as best I could make out, that he liked me and then he said thank you and to get him back up in twenty minutes. I tried my best to softly wake him and ask him if he wanted to get up, secretly hoping he would want to sleep more and more…hoping that he would drift off into the ether so that I didn’t have to watch him, hold him, lift him, hear him, and feel his body groan against mine when I lifted him from his bed.
But he always said yes.
And I would go home with the smell of him on my clothing, asking myself why. Why did he keep asking me to lift him up? His body was caving in on him, crushing him, and every breath was a fight. He couldn’t eat normal food. He could barely speak. His hearing was going. I don’t know about his eyesight, I should have made a doctors appointment for that.
Then one day as I was lifting him into bed his wife came into the room in her wheelchair and she heard him groan as he usually did. And I could see in her face pain and fear and I told her that it was ok because the pain didn’t matter to him, all that mattered was that he loved her and that’s why he kept asking me to lift him up, because of love…because of her.
But all that is gone now, the smell on my clothing at the end of the day is just me.
But Luther left his mark.
I had the privilege of bearing up out of bed a man and his love.
So I’m glad that I prayed when I was a kid.
But if I could do it over again, if death has brought me any knowledge,
if I have any wisdom,
any fear of the Lord,
any response to God.
I would have prayed for Love.
But He gave me love anyway.