Daybreak

Once when I was in the hospital, I was walking-very slowly- to the bathroom and an old woman was walking down the hall just the same pace as me. Her skin was antique white like mine, and her eyes were dull blue-gray like ocean shadows. And we looked at each other, her and I, and I think we both wondered how long the other had to live. Then bowed over, like branches after a storm, we continued walking on, knowing you cannot ask in hospitals though sometimes I think people should.

When I think about her, I think about the long hallways of retirement homes. The hallways hold in their quietness the smell of the end of all things. I pass by the rooms until I see her in my memory and she sits facing the window. The light that silhouettes her is the sun of a new beginning, but tomorrow it could be the light of heaven or judgment that throws her shadow back. I wonder what she thinks about. All that she has done is a shadow behind her. All that she was praised and loved for was branded on hearts long since dead. Now there is silence. There are stories too, but mainly silence. Now all she has, is what she has been, and what she is as she sits in the quiet room. We all know this because we sense the emptiness of only sitting around and telling even the most glorious of tales.

All my life I’ve done instead of been. But the beautiful thing about being a Christian, is that the Holy Spirit comes and He testifies to us these truths if we will reach into the supernatural and receive them by faith. Psalms 91 says “so teach us to number our days, so we will incline our hearts to wisdom.” Maybe the reason God strips every man just before he return to dust, is so that the heart can incline to wisdom. The dull roar of the audience, wealth, physical beauty and strength; it all just quietly fades. There is God, and who you are, alone at the end of a hallway. And when I’m there sitting in my wheelchair I want to have been something worth being.

I want to be a woman. Not just do and not do the things women are allotted to. These two things seem so similar but at the end, just a degree off lands you miles from true north. It’s hard to grow in who you are instead of what you do, but it can be done. It takes a willingness to be quiet, to be intentional, and truthful, and willingness to endure brokenness and pain. Ironic, that all these things can come with old age or before, depending on the softness of a person's heart. Well, I know for myself, I want to be willing to be who I am ment to be this side of the light, while the rising light still means daybreak.