Healing Waters
Epiphany
I was eighteen when it happened. I was carpooling on my way home from college when a car rushed past me at great speed and scared the living daylights out of me. The car was careening out of control which I sensed in a split second. I let out a breath which I had held in that moment. There was a buzz in our car as we discussed what had just happened. Moments later we came upon the wreckage, the speeding car lay upside down over an embankment, the= driver most assuredly dead.
It was one of those moments when adolescent invincibility suddenly comes to an abrupt end. The driver of our car pulled to a stop and ran to check on the other driver; other drivers were also stopping. She returned to our car and declared him dead. We sat in shock. We decided to say a prayer for the lost soul. It helped to pray.
You can divide the world asunder in a moment, a flash of fire and fury; it only takes a word, a thoughtless action, a single deliberate cruelty. The heart snaps shut in a moment of self-preservation lest trauma ensue. The world is now divided between what can be experienced and what can be known at the deepest level. Singular and vast, the waters of the soul enter the portals of our lives through our hearts; when the soul cannot enter because the heart is closed, sometimes there is a moment of grace, and the heart flutters, however briefly. In that moment, the waters of the soul spill forth. Eternity has a way of healing what it touches. In the moment of our prayer, my heart fluttered.
Monday morning was not at all forgiving. Storm after storm had battered our hearts. My heart had snapped shut. I ran my fingers over the clothes line. The wind was buffeting the sheets. I was supposed to bring them inside, but it was deadly in there. So I tarried. Mom and Dad were fighting like cats and dogs. Finally I did my duty and gathered the laundry, folding each piece as best I could.
Once inside, I did my best to scurry out of sight, lest I become the target. But luck would not have it that way. I got called on the carpet for being late with the laundry. I looked at my mom and said, “I folded it all.” She looked at me startled and said, “Oh, thank you.” I asked her what else she needed help with. She sighed and asked me to do the dishes. I obliged.
My parents’ fighting did not cease. The rivers of justice flow unending until all is settled. Still, we would not be able to survive as a species were it not for grace. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth ensures mutual destruction in the age of atomic weaponry. But on a smaller scale, this is no less true. We forgive out of sheer self-preservation and common sense. My parents did not quite understand this. A tight spot in the heart needs loosening, and this is the job of the waters of the soul when healing is needed. Being helpful loosened the tight spot where my heart had snapped shut. The waters of my soul found an opening in being helpful. Healing has many levels. My mom forgave me for being late; I forgave her for fighting with my dad.
Still, you cannot make a heart forgive. You cannot make yourself forgive. Forgiveness happens when the heart has opened sufficiently to the waters of the soul. This is not, purely speaking, a decision, though the decision to forgive helps. An encounter of the divine sort, listening to the still, small voice inside the heart can open the mind to the possibility of forgiveness, but the heart knows her own pathway to healing. These are deep and mysterious and sometimes quite simple. I was twelve when I began to understand this phenomenon. My mom went back to work. She wept a lot on Saturdays as the undone household chores from the week piled up. I tried to help, but it was not enough. I tried to do more than my share, but it was not enough. Mom had to learn how to be a working mother, something she had not done before. She could not forgive herself for not being perfect. She settled for getting better over time . . . eventually.
I was wounded sometime in the fourth grade by something someone said on the playground. I felt the sting of the words and no way to let them go. It was just some expression of what a clod I was at playing kickball. I knew they were right which gave me no way to let the words go. I wish they had just said sorry. Sometimes forgiveness is aided by words of apology, sincerely meant, sincerely felt, by the expression of understanding of what wounded. Children are taught this concept in pre-school and are quick to tell one another when the apology did not sound sincere, which bars the way to conflict resolution.
But there are moments when apology and even acceptance of apology are not enough to re-open the heart.
Was there ever a moment when someone did something to try to make things right after hurting you? The making of amends can be one of the most powerful keys to re-open a wounded heart. Simple acts of affection, meeting an unmet need, restoring what has been lost, completing what was left undone, finding the greater good that needs restoring and doing so, and not making the same mistake again: these titrate the hurt, allowing the heart to re-open. Sometimes music re-opens the heart; a song with the right sentiment, a melody that soothes, even a rhythm that invites quieting can be quite effective in re-opening the heart. Time can be an aide to the heart as distance and perspective rejoins heart and soul. When you are in the fourth grade, things hurt that just do not matter later on.
Some wounds go very deep, however. And there are the difficult cases: the waters of the soul heal these also but only when the heart grows weary of her own suffering. Therapy is a place where these wounds often surface. Feelings emerge, images show up in thoughts and dreams, old barriers break down, the heart opens where it has been closed. The heart hears the whisper of the soul, on the other side of the door, offering solace. And she accepts that possibility for the moment. When the wounds are very old, the heart may have forgotten where she laid the key. But the soul remembers and will tell her if she asks. The waters of the soul heal even the very old and the very broken places. The waters of the soul remember what it is to be good, to be pure, to be profoundly loved, to forgive, to pray.
