The Dawn Will End the Night

After work yesterday, I went to my favorite place in the world. It's a Secret Garden. Seriously, it is this actual walled-in garden with beautiful little windy paths through the bushes and an old fountain and birds and it's lovely in a magical kind of way. You almost think the birds will start talking to you or little gnomes will wander out from under a tree stump. So I sat on this little bench under a trellis of hanging vines that were shading me and I finished the book. And it ended up being quite hopeful and lovely, almost more so because she goes so deep into the reality and rawness of pain for so much of the book. The breaking of the dawn of hope in the book is so much more exquisite because of the wreckage and damage we have been wading through to get there. I wonder if this will be true of my life here on earth. Will I get to that exquisite, fresh place? Or will I have to wait until heaven?

One of the sweetest parts of the book was the afterword and the acknowledgements, which is unusual. But right there in the thank yous, was a note "to Andrew: thanks for Psalm 88." Wow. The signs there are just too much to handle. I never knew that anyone else knew about that Psalm. Once I told a girl that it was my favorite Psalm and she went home and read it and the next time I saw her she looked at me like I belonged in a psych ward. She still brings it up to this day. Read it if you get a chance. When I begin to doubt that Jesus ever really felt the pain I have felt, when I think of the Passion movie (which I hated) and how his pain looks simpler, less complicated and easier than my pain, I read that and I remember that He felt all of my pain because He lives in me. His pain prior to the cross maybe was less complicated, but He felt mine when He was with me in it. He knows the violation and even still to this day He knows the residue it has left on me.

And the ending of the book made me think of the last line of this song by Van Morrison...

Feel the angel of the present
In the mighty crystal fire
Lift me up consume my darkness
Let me travel even higher

I'm a dweller on the threshold
As I cross the burning ground
Let me go down to the water
Watch the great illusion drown

I'm a dweller on the threshold
And I'm waiting at the door
And I'm standing in the darkness
I don't want to wait no more

I'm gonna turn and face the music
The music of the spheres
Lift me up consume my darkness
When the midnight disappears

I will walk out of the darkness
And I'll walk into the light
And I'll sing the song of ages
That the dawn will end the night