Like the Dawn

(This is a story that starts out rough - as many good stories do. You find yourself wondering where all this is going, and then something happens. A paradigm shifts. A coldness is thawed. A moment is redeemed. Redemption always changes the story.)

- - -

When I woke up this morning at 3:15, I felt like a shadow. I was grumpy, feeling my strength for this day to already be inadequate, as I crashed into a table on the way to take my shower. "Only 21 more hours to go," is not a good thought to have at the beginning of a day. It's  quite depressing, and to realize you're thinking it is even moreso.

I made it through my shower with no injuries. Managed to shove my belongings in a suitcase, rushed out the door with damp hair (which I LOATHE because I am always cold as it is), and tumbled into the car for our hour drive to the airport. We were in Virginia, needing to get home to Nashville. It was my idea to fly in before work, as to give us an extra evening with Tim's family in VA... but alas, logic and remembrance fails miserably prior to 6:00 a.m.

So I was grumpy. Not because I am a grump - I am usually at my most cheerful in the mornings - but because I wanted to cry. Like a child who feels weary and doesn't understand why she has been woken up to take her medicine in the middle of the night. Blah. Trudging and drudgery. (They sound incredibly similar, for good reason... One is the action, the other is the place in which that action occurs. My morning knew them both.)

We made it to the airport in a blur, buzzed through security (I do remember giving conscious thanks to God for the SkyPriority line), purchased some coffee, made it to our gate, and took those last few hollowed out steps onto the plane.

Window seat.

My grumpiness began to abate slightly as the coffee began doing its work, and my husband just happened to be looking so sleepy and cute that I'm convinced it would have begun to melt even the hardest of hearts... 

And then I made the choice to get out my Bible. I wasn't conscious of it being a wise choice at the time - if I'm being honest, it was probably still motivated by a twinge of self-absorption. I like to read, and sometimes in the roughest moments, in the most unfortunate way, reading can afford me a momentary suspension from present circumstances. (This is not the case, the majority of the time - at its best, reading actually improves my life and circumstances, and intensifies my love of knowledge and of God.)

Anyway. So for whatever reason, perhaps merely out of habit, I picked up my Bible, and flipped to the book of Psalms. I've been reading through this book the past week or so... and today, my reading was in Psalm 119.

- - -

Dawn reaches into darkness, like a soft hand reaching towards something cold... Slowly, softly, allowing it's warmth to thaw the blackness. The fingertips of dawn, reaching at the stars, waking up the sky, lightening the earth as it is summoned to do by the God who commands it. So it is with the dawn we see each morning... and so it is inside a heart. And then my eyes froze on this verse:

I rise before dawn and cry for help;
I have put my hope in Your Word...
Psalm 119:147

Let my cry come before You, O Lord;
Give me understanding according to Your word.
 Let my supplication come before You;
Deliver me according to Your word.
Let my lips utter praise,
For You teach me Your statutes.
Let my tongue sing of Your word,
For all Your commandments are righteousness.
Let Your hand be ready to help me,
For I have chosen Your precepts.
I long for Your salvation, O Lord,
And Your law is my delight.
Let my soul live that it may praise You,
And let Your ordinances help me.
I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek Your servant,
For I do not forget Your commandments.
(Psalm 119:169-176)

I shuddered. I looked out of the plane window. Three minutes before, the sky had been totally black. But in the time it had taken me to read those verses, dawn had touched the sky.
 

In an instant... isn't it always in the sharpness of an instant, that we feel our spirit release into freedom? Humility. A death of grumpiness. A thawing of heart. A confession to an almighty God who knows me so incredibly, intimately, and intricately well. Who knew that I would wake up this morning, shortsighted and blind in my flesh. Who knew that I would feel like a shadow, until I stepped into the Light of His Word, and allowed it to thaw out my hardened heart. Who knew where to find me, thousands of feet up in the sky, sitting quietly and grumpily on a plane somewhere between Virginia and Tenneessee... and Who knew how to reach me, like a new dawn.

- - -

We landed safely in Nashville, and I apologized to my husband for my grumpiness. He had definitely taken the brunt of my short comments and victimized disposition. (This is the not-fun part of being married - having to confess your sins to one another - but it must be done, and the intimacy of being fully known is always so much sweeter than the falseness of being only half-revealed.)

This day is long, and it will continue to be for another 13 hours... my flesh cannot help but count them. But as I was so beautifully reminded this morning, though my flesh may fail, He is my portion. He will sustain me. He redeems the story of the dark, by bringing the dawn across the sky.

And even thousands of miles up, in the darkness of an early-morning sky, He finds a way to redeem even the grumpiest of stories.