When the arms of mothers aren't enough
What I remember most about Katherine was her arms. Warm arms, substantial arms, the kind of arms that strain against the sleeves of a cotton blouse when they hug. Arms that comfort. The arms of God are mothers' arms.
She came to us to pray, to us, the fourth Sunday of the month after second service prayer team, waiting at the front of the sanctuary for the lost jobs, the wayward daughters, the upcoming surgeries, the struggles with sinful thoughts, coming to us for assurance.
She came to us for hope. I touched her arm and prayed, startled when I touched her, startled that I found myself in her soul, for a moment, just long enough, startled by the blackness inside, so dark I could hardly stand up in it. We prayed, each one of us, and then I let her go, thinking my arms had caught her.
Sometimes arms are broken. Like the summer my mother had a boil on her arm, the left one, the side I sat next to at the table when I was five, when my head was just tall enough to lean over, after dessert, and rest against the thickest part of her arm, the softest part, the part where the flesh spreads out beneath the shoulder bone.
And later that week Katherine took her life, with her daughters' jump rope, in her basement, slung over some beam, I suppose. Did she search through a pile of castoff toys to find it? Did she step on the lid of the toy box?
Sometimes we just fail.
Could I have pulled her out of that? Should my arms have been enough? Only the arms of God could have snatched her up from that. And they did.
She came to us to pray, to us, the fourth Sunday of the month after second service prayer team, waiting at the front of the sanctuary for the lost jobs, the wayward daughters, the upcoming surgeries, the struggles with sinful thoughts, coming to us for assurance.
She came to us for hope. I touched her arm and prayed, startled when I touched her, startled that I found myself in her soul, for a moment, just long enough, startled by the blackness inside, so dark I could hardly stand up in it. We prayed, each one of us, and then I let her go, thinking my arms had caught her.
Sometimes arms are broken. Like the summer my mother had a boil on her arm, the left one, the side I sat next to at the table when I was five, when my head was just tall enough to lean over, after dessert, and rest against the thickest part of her arm, the softest part, the part where the flesh spreads out beneath the shoulder bone.
And later that week Katherine took her life, with her daughters' jump rope, in her basement, slung over some beam, I suppose. Did she search through a pile of castoff toys to find it? Did she step on the lid of the toy box?
Sometimes we just fail.
Could I have pulled her out of that? Should my arms have been enough? Only the arms of God could have snatched her up from that. And they did.
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