When Heart Stampedes Wild Horse

It did rain. And the pecans were toasted with oats and honey. Granola. The way my mother made it. Handwritten recipe card. Her own scrawl and some of the blue ink smeared in a bit of ingredient on counter. And I feel so close to her right now.

Cereal bowl in hand and a heart full of warm, I sit at patio table. Yellow dog sits at my side. Hopeful for a crumb. Nothing falls.

And I chew crumbly. Swallow the sweet down throat. And something else not in bowl. An unease. I've almost forgotten what it tastes like. But it’s there this morning.

Weekend unease from too many weekends that didn’t have enough honey, brown sugar and oil to hold the crumbs together savory and warm. Too many weekends where the ingredients for nourishing sweet times layed cold on a baking sheet and were bumped carelessly and scattered to the floor.

I have cried sweeping weekends up off the floor. Have tossed them into the trash. And it buries down deep. Lump hard to swallow.

How to keep swallowing when it tastes like broken trust? Feels like soul indigestion? It just doesn’t go down right. I have curled in a ball just breathing through it. Breathing through the panic.

When everything that was supposed to be the way it was supposed to be, wasn’t. Even though now the honey is sweet and warming.

When the crumbs were scattered and stomped on. Even though now they are not. 

And it can’t really be explained. There are just life reasons. And I guess I'm really separating the then from the now. What was from what is.

When heart stampedes wild horse and reigns have flown out of hand and it’s hang on for the ride gulping air or pass out in seizure?
 

I eat His Word, breathe, sleep, and wake to do it all over again.

I cling to His Word long and lean across the sheets of holy page in bed. I breathe in calming peppermint oil truth and trust on pillow.

Inhale all hope essence vapor twining grip on truth.

Peppermint On My Pillow

Sometimes I need to separate the kernels. Spread them out before me like sesame seeds, oats, pecans, and wheat bran on a baking sheet just to see what is what. What is known and what is mystery and what is buried deep and causing my lungs to burn, my heart to scare, my head to spin light til I collapse.

I am separating kernels as much as I can. It’s a little sticky when family history and marriage are in the mix. A little yeasty. There is disease, chemical and hormonal imbalance, misfiring neurons, fears. In short, there is messy life inside and out.

But communion also. Communion with a capital “C.”

Bring life to the table. Set it up around table and seat it there. The Judas stuff and the trustworthy stuff. And Christ breaks the bread saying, “Partake of Me and remember Me even here now.”

I’m at this table. And I’m remembering Christ with every breath for life. Swallowing truth. Every kernel honey clumped.  Tasting bread scent. Warm life rising. Risen.

Bread.

Bread of life.
Bread come down from heaven.

This bread of the hard thanksgiving broken. And I’m told what it is. “This is My body,” it’s called.

And there is this bread of the wilderness. And I’m not told what it is. Just “Manna,” meaning “What is it?”

And I think about that bread at table. The oddly shaped loaf that I occasionally pull out of my oven and serve at dinner. It’s easy for me to forget the kernel when I make my five pound bag purchase of King Arthur whole wheat flour. And I even watch the yeast bubble alive.

Or I think about the clumpy granola just cooled and bagged for breakfast. Kernels and seeds and the bran and even the honey-sweetened oil. Hmmm…yeast and oil. Something spiritual here.

And I’m more in touch with the “Do this in remembrance of Me” mystery when I’m cracking pecan shells or kneading, and somehow I see it more clearly when I pour the granola or slice the bread.

 I Love You, Mom

 

 

 

It’s what goes into it and it’s seeing what it is.

Known and unknown.

This “Body of Christ” and this “What?” This bread at Passover table to remember Him every time I eat, and this “What is it?” bread when I have no idea what’s going down.

I’m curious about it. How could I not be when it’s called “What is it?” I google and find that in Hebrew it means, “Bread of the Face of God.” Ah. I really like that.

 

I have made my “baking sheet” list. Separated kernels garnered over years and through generations German and, what am I? Scottish-French? And I eat bread in remembrance untangled. Or try. Because Christ did. He did!

He did share the last meal, unaltered when the Judas stuff was in hand on the table, (see Luke 22:21). And not miss a beat.

He broke the bread. Separated it out. He cared about what stuff every hand at that table had held and did hold. And was not controlled by it. Knew what was what. And did naught to control any of it.

And maybe this is the unease. I am controlled, altered, by what's at hand. I am! And this little codependent admits to controlling those life "whats" in attempt to be unaltered by them. Only it doesn’t work and Jesus did just the opposite and that does work. I don’t know how. Yet. Me thinks I have a lot to learn from this.

Can I gather kernels, twist and roll sheaves, and eat the bread remembering the Body of Christ? With my head in the right place? Heart steady? Unaltered by whatever else is facing me?

Can I do the hard pisteuo even one labored breath at a time? Inhale, “Thank” and exhale, “You” because the bread is the “Bread of the Body of Christ” and is the “Bread of the Face of God?”

I must. It is relief.

 

“When weight of all the garner’d years

Bows me, and praise must find relief

In harvest-song, and smiles and tears

Twist in the band that binds my sheaf,

Thou known Unknown, dark, radiant sea

In whom we live, in whom we move,

My spirit must lose itself in Thee,

Crying a name-Life, Light, or Love.”

 -E Dowden (italics mine)

 

I cry His name.

 

 written by: Carolyn Roehrig