I Am With You

I was in my husband's bathrobe. I have one of my own, but I refuse to wear it. His is better. It's over-sized and breathable, large enough to cover my legs as I curl on the couch with a pre-chaos cup of coffee. I'd gotten up for a refill and in my stumbling blindness, rammed my pinky toe into the table leg and was mouthing mother fucker under my breath in the otherwise silent house when... I saw it. Brilliant light seeped under the crack of the living room door. I stepped closer to observe, spent a few moments pondering the source of such luminescence, then flung open the door, revealing a sunrise sky so brilliant it hurt my eyes to look upon.

But I kept looking, anyway.

As I stared at the hues of red and gold and orange, I felt something creaking in the back of my mind. There was a swelling just behind my temples, a pressure ever building only to release with a violent, audible click. My heart felt swollen and bruised and unable to comprehend the beauty that greeted my eyes. A sound of awe emanated from the heart of me in a quiet exhale. The words drifted across my tongue and out with my breath. I sang in a voice foreign to my own ears. I sang in the voice of angels, a hymn I hadn't remembered the words to until that moment,

Oh God, you are my God,

and I will ever praise you.

Oh God, you are my God,

and I will ever praise you.

And I will seek you in the morning,

and I will learn to walk in your ways

and step by step you'll lead me...

and I will follow you all of my days.

In the following ringing silence, every hair on my body rose. I hadn't meant to sing. It had been entirely out of my control. The sunrise stretched on for what seemed like hours as I stood frozen in my husband's bathrobe, arms outstretched to greet the morning, with my hair floating on ends around my head in a golden halo. I drank and drank in the beauty of the morning, mind racing to try and explain away what had just happened, but falling woefully short. I couldn't explain the voice that had echoed out of my throat, so rich and deep and clear it sounded more like the babbling of a brook than the song of a meager human. I couldn't explain the fact that I was seeing colors in spectrums unknown. I couldn't explain why, as I stood pondering all of this, my hair was still floating around my head in a fiery crown... why my arms had been outstretched for all of this time, but I didn't feel the weight of them. I couldn't explain it. So I decided then and there to stop trying. I had been given a gift. The only appropriate reaction was to greet the gift in good faith.

Once more in control of my body, I chose to sing the words in my own voice.

It was a watery, pitiful thing, compared with the angelic refrain of moments gone by, but I choked the words out:

Oh God, you are my God,

and I will ever praise you.

Oh God, you are my God,

and I will ever praise you.

And I will seek you in the morning,

and I will learn to walk in your ways

and step by step you'll lead me...

and I will follow you all of my days.

The last note rang in the hollow quiet of my empty living room and just when the sight of the sunrise became too much for my meek eyes to bear, a voice of ethereal thunder quietly called, "I am with you."

My hair fell limply down my back and my arms snapped to my sides, the sky turned from brilliance to dusty grey-blue in an instant.

But the beauty of the sunrise lived on, tucked away in my heart as I turned to go back inside.

"Good morning, angel mama," my little daughter greeted from the doorway. I took her hand and she smiled up at me. "Good morning," I whispered. She just looked at me knowingly and gave my hand a gentle squeeze. The reflection of sunrise flashed in her eyes, and I saw the face of God for the second time that morning.