David's son dies and that man after God's heart picks himself up off the floor, dresses, and goes to the temple to worship.  I hadn't been able to read that without halting, wondering over his response to such a horrific loss until there I was: driving home from the appointment that required me to sit with him in a small, brown and beige room with graphs and pictures and the wails of a child next door seeping through.  We sat there trying not to talk about it, talking around it, breathing in sighs and unable to hold still, all nervous fingers and tapping feet.  Him cajoling first the receptionist into letting me go back with him Oh, I see the note on your chart, I'm sure your sister can be in the room with you and then the nurse into explaining what she may have seen in his PET scan, her telling him about the color, about the way it might light up on the screen, using the word pretty.  

We sat there and heard hard, hard things.  On the inhale of relief, the color was not everywhere, an exhale too quick and then something caught, has been caught ever since somewhere behind my sternum, somewhere between my lungs and my heart and I have thought to google the thrumming, to pull up a graphic of those organs and to locate the sharp jab that hasn't left since the layout of his diagnosis, the steps for his care, the percentages and stages and the doctor's repetition of You're only 34.  You're so so young.

I was driving home and it was beginning to darken and I was listening to The Blessing for the seventh time when I realized that I wanted to be there-- in David's temple, bent, face down.  I craved The Notre Dame and its way it has of making you feel small, making you feel like you are indeed on humming, holy ground, the singing of men echoing off the walls all the way to heaven's floor.  I nearly pulled to the side of the road I need to be on my knees.

Did you know that you can read the ruination of Job and the grace of Romans side by side and that it will gently undo you?  A children's book at night (Psalm 23) will cause the thrumming to build so greatly that you're convinced something may fly out of your chest cavity and your daughter's evening prayer at the table thank you for uncle to get better pushes the thrumming to the front, it's here, right under the skin, panging against my breast bone. It's also there in David's temple wailing, there in Job's blessing of the name of the Lord after all was lost, it's in the valley of the shadow of death; I'm finding it nearly everywhere I look.  I've craved the mountaintop in the past, craved my feet to be on high places, but to crave the glory of His presence after facing the harshest moment, this is a new gift from an incredibly kind and severe God and it is right here in this holy space that I am beginning to understand the posture of grief (bent, folded, laid low) in worship (praising, declaring, hope filled).