Hemmed

We're not even a month in and last night I cried hot wet tears, my head in my pillow and my husband bent over me. It wasn't a disagreement or fight or argument or any of the things I continue to brace myself for in this thing called marriage, it was the death of me and he, and the newness of we. When we were barely engaged, preparing his house to be sold, it was a sweltering day, he was bent over a toilet, his hair wet with sweat and his hands deep in cleaning supplies. I stood in the bathroom door, cut-off jeans, dirty hands, a mop bucket of water just spilled in the living room and we laughed. What is there to do when you're doing so many of life's big things in such a short time? You laugh and then you just do the next thing. Life was a to-do list.

But then, suddenly, it's done.

The house is sold. The storage unit is packed. The wedding is over. The honeymoon is over. You're moved to a new state. You have a house under contract. You start a new job. You go to a new church. You're no longer two, but one. And then you cry hot, wet tears into your pillow on a Monday night because what happened to your life?

All of the good things, all at the same time.

I came home from Denver four months ago ripe with expectation. A dream job in a city I loved, with a church I admired, in full sight of the Rocky Mountains, in a green and lush state—what more could I ask for? I said as much to a friend at our coffeehouse that morning and what he said back to me began the whirlwind relationship that led to marriage. My husband (I still say that word with timidity, as if trying something for the first time—which I am) and I say to one another all the time, "God doesn't have to be this gracious to us and to display His faithfulness to us like this, and yet He has chosen to and we're so grateful." And we are.

We are.

But even an overwhelming avalanche of goodness is still an avalanche and can crush.

For so many years the lack of so much I desired felt like I was somehow out of bounds of God's goodness. There was a pasture where His faithful sheep prospered and I had somehow wandered too far from the fold. But it wasn't my faithfulness that garnered His, I found, it was His faithfulness that drew me back again and again. He hemmed me in, behind and before, and laid his hand on me when I needed it. I still cannot understand His reasons for withholding and now His reasons for giving in abundance, but David knew something of that:

"You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it."

Caedmon's Call has a lyric which says, "The problem with these mysteries is they're too mysterious," and this is how I feel about life right now. I cannot understand it and I cannot even try. It is too wonderful, too high, too mysterious, too good, and too hard.

It is enough that I am hemmed in, behind and before, with the hand of the good shepherd upon me for discipline and love, and sometimes both at the same time.