In my dream, the lady offered to sell me a halo — special order from a thin catalog. She held it up for me to see the title: Christian Paraphernalia. “Cheap, too,” she said. “Halos are on sale today.”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’m in a hurry.”
“You sure? Sale ends today.”
“I’m sure. I need to hurry and catch my flight to Toronto.”
Chaotic! That’s how my dreams are. For most of us they make no sense. I was not in the market for a halo, nor was I on my way anywhere that day, certainly not Toronto. I’ve been there. Toronto is nice, and I may go again, but not today. The halo? Who knows what that was about — maybe my desire (or need) to be more angelic or heavenly. I don’t know. Besides, the theology on halos is sketchy, to say the least.
The dream was late last summer, and many things were chaotic. A friend fell and crushed her femur in three places. Another shifted from a nursing home to the hospital, barely responsive. The brother of a Life Group friend died without the Lord. A neighbor was in Alaska for two weeks and asked me to keep watch on her house — just in case. Just in case, what? I’m not a good guard dog. I scare easily, am afraid of the dark, and can’t even bark.
I also had taken on three additional writing deadlines. My brain felt foggy, and my right eye was clouded with cataracts. My left eye was in treatment for wet macular degeneration, so that eyeball was getting a series of shots retina specialists award to eyes like mine. My husband was facing a risky but necessary colonoscopy at 85. A surgeon had just told one of our grandsons he would soon face his 17th surgery.
Internationally, war erupted — Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah. In Sudan, where civil war raged, the population faced “extreme levels of food insecurity.” Near-starvation, to say it clearly, there and elsewhere. Nationally and locally, elections loomed with ridiculous name-calling, accusations, and counter accusations. Who was telling the truth? Who knew?
Many things fell apart those weeks. Yet, in my heart of hearts, I was aware of even worse things falling apart for other people — deaths of husbands, wives, and children. Relatives rejecting the Lord. Homes and lives lost in floods, hurricanes, fires. It was worse for many. Yet my chaos and my friends’ chaos shook me. It was like four lines from William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming”:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
In those late summer days, Yeats seemed right. He should know, shouldn’t he? An Irish poet, he wrote his poem in 1919 in the aftermath of World War I. In addition, his homeland teemed with political unrest and armed rebellion while trying to break from British rule. Yeats’ pregnant wife had recently (and barely) survived a grave illness from Spanish flu. Yeats’ life must have seemed utter chaos.
His world was whirling, flailing, falling apart. “Turning and turning in the widening gyre…the centre cannot not hold,” he wrote. By the end of his 22-line poem, his “second coming” was dismal. Not Jesus’ second coming but an alarming monster with a lion’s body and a man’s head, a “rough beast, its hour come round at last…slouching towards Bethlehem.” Most scholars agree Yeats means the Antichrist.
Not that Yeats was a Christian. Though a nominal Protestant early in life, he eventually became enmeshed in mysticism, spiritualism, and the occult. Though the poem is dark and troubling, without hope, it reminded me of three things I had ignored.
One, the trouble I stewed about for days was mostly small compared to others suffering unimaginable losses. Mine were splinters while others had swords thrust into their sides.
Two, my fretting and worrying were mostly about me, my discomfort, my self-focus, my resentment, my fear. I wanted peace and tranquility and no problems.
Three, I had Isaiah who understood chaos. He knew how things fall apart. He knew the good and the bad and left me messages. Sometimes, Isaiah pointed a bony finger and waggled his tongue at me for my worry and fear. Other times, he poured oil in my wounds and smeared it all over the sore places of my mind and soul.
Within days of Isaiah’s chidings and encouragements, the Lord also sent four-footed animals to our backyard to visually remind me He was holding all things together (Colossians 1:17).
White-tailed deer came first in ones and twos. Then a doe with tiny twin fawns, still spotted. Soon another doe and her twin fawns. The second set of twins were a little older and with fewer spots.
Next, the two does and their twins all arrived on the same day.
Then one Sunday afternoon — the day 16 family members came for a birthday celebration at our house — the does and their twins brought others, so nine deer grazed on our green grass near the creek. After eating, they lay around in the grass and chewed their cuds as if at home.
Something good and right was happening in our backyard and in God’s created world. The Lord gave me comfort and pleasure in those unexpected deer. And something good and right was happening inside our house, too. Sixteen members of the Evans family hugged and laughed, blew out candles, talked loudly, and celebrated with salty snacks, birthday cake, love, and peace.
Before breakfast the next morning, I dove back into Isaiah. Sunday had been a glorious day. Monday was too. Isaiah 7:2-4 reminded me that when chaos comes, and my heart shakes with fear like leaves in a wind, I can stand firm without fainting. The enemies of my peace are “smoldering stumps,” not dangerous “firebrands,” Isaiah said. I gained a fresh infusion of joy and gratitude and hope.
Yes, some things had fallen apart, but Yeats was wrong — the Center still held.
Often, between the womb and the tomb, chaos happens; things fall apart. They have in the past. They will in the future. But that Monday morning, I remembered our Center, our Savior holds. Despite the Lord allowing “the bread of adversity” and “the water of affliction,” He will not hide from us. Our eyes will see Him, and our ears will hear Him say, “This is the way, walk ye in it” (Isaiah 30:20-21). Those who don’t cling to the Center want to hear “smooth things” and “illusions” (30:10). We who trust the Center want to hear only Him and cling to His way — the Way Everlasting. He is gracious, “our arm every morning” and “the stability of our times” (33:2,6).
Someone told me Leonardo da Vinci once said, “When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come.”
A rushing stream. What an image of life! The Ammonoosuc River in the White Mountains of northern New Hampshire began in The Lake of the Clouds on the western slope of famed Mount Washington. Forty miles later, it flowed a few hundred yards from our front door in Littleton, New Hampshire — rushing, rocky, clear, and lovely.
Life is like that. We dip our fingers into its rushing waters not knowing what is still to come. Will the waters of our lives be crystal clear and lovely or rocky and frightening? We don’t know. What we do know is if things fall apart on those rocks or in that rushing water, our Center, our Stability, our Way Everlasting will hold.
Yes, our Center will hold. He always has. He always will.
Always.
About the Writer: Brenda Evans lives and writes in Ashland, Kentucky. You may reach her at beejayevans@windstream.net.
