I like to write. I like a word, well more like words. I like the spoken ones, the written ones. I like the words that sound the same but have entirely different meanings, homophones. I like their, they’re, and there. I like words like adjunct, antithesis, and abundantly.
I am rarely at a loss for words. One need only to spend a few moments with me to realize I will fill the gaps, the times of silence with words. I seem to have been born with them in my mouth. Most of the world spends its days learning to speak. I have spent mine learning when not to speak. I have learned that when I am silent, someone else will fill the gaps with their words.
My Mama used to say, “Sometimes there are just no words.”
She spent many a nursing year as a Hospice nurse and she’d heard all manner of words spoken in an effort to comfort the bereaved, well-intentioned words spoken in attempt to make the Dearly Departed’s passing more palatable. My mama knew, the reality is, sometimes there is absolutely nothing that can be spoken by humanity to make things better, to make a bad situation better, words that usher in comfort and good intentions.
Sometimes Mama would use that phrase when she had observed something so bizarre or unique that she lacked the vocabulary to adequately describe it. She used it like an old Southern Lady might tilt her head and proclaim “Well I declare dear” as she has been enlightened on some new idea.
It should not have come as a surprise to me when I lost the words. When they just were not there. I’d found myself shaken to my core and try as I may I simply could not make the words I needed to. I found myself repeatedly in stunned silence. I would attempt to 
pray and there were no words. Sometimes there would be tears, hundreds of them, they fell as readily from my eyes as words so often do from my lips. I would try to speak but it was like I could move my mouth and no audible sound came forth. I would be screaming inside but not even a whisper was there. My written words were just as few, I would attempt to sit and to write to journal what I knew necessary, but I just couldn’t. My fingers would glide over the qwerty keyboard and nothing…no punctuation, no sentence fragments, no run on sentences and comma splices, the repeat grammar offenses I make. I would slam my hands down on the keyboard in frustration and vacate my chair out of disgust.
I tried all the “tricks” to stimulate communication, reading a favorite author or two, having a more intense and intentional prayer time. I tried to talk nonsense and fluff in hopes that deeper and more substantial words would push their way through. I would pray. And suddenly one day I had the realization of something I had not known before, a promise I have known as truth but never truly experienced. As I poured out my heart and grieved I found myself telling God what He already knew.
“I’ve got nothing.”
He knew, he always knows and by way of provision He brought to my remembrance something I knew, have known, for a long time.
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Romans 8:26 ESV
He reminded me through His word that there were no words, but there didn’t have to be. He was, He is, interceding on my behalf in a language of words known only to Him. In the stunned silence I could trust He would pray over me exactly what I needed. I could trust that healing would come and that soon enough the words would return.
So when he said, “Lord, Thank you that we Martins know peace, and not like a piece of pizza or a piece of pie,” I thought I might lose it. My bowed head shot up, eyes darted to execute a quick glance to my left as the driver of our vehicle continued on “We know Peace from you. Shalom Peace.” I knew what he meant and I must admit that I was a bit taken aback that he had just prayed it.
That peace that can transcend understanding, a peace that isn’t like its homophonic counterpart, a piece that can be easily consumed or separated from its whole. We Believers are that Shalom peace. We make one another better. In that Peace we can rest. Scott Martin likely did not know when he prayed those words out loud that he would impact my thoughts for the day.
My Aunt Sis, yep that’s a thing, an Aunt Sis, a for real person, who can spin a yarn better than most. She filled my 9-year-old ears with tales of the poor Hinkle children barefoot and stair-stepped playing for hours in the woods. She told of me about adventures long since passed and mostly forgotten, adventures that’d’ve even made Huck Finn jealous. I reckon the love of a good story comes from deep within the roots of who I am.
I debated going to library or even the dreaded Big Store of Confusion to see what my friend had to say for the month. But as it would happen, after a drive in a torrential downpour, peering through foggy windows and a safe arrival 10 minutes late for an appointment, I looked on the waiting room table and there he sat, as if he were waiting for me to come in from the rain. In that long-awaited issue, He talked of New Orleans and beads and hotdogs. I mused at his statement about the men in Dr Seuss hats, “because you couldn’t get snockered enough for a Dr. Seuss hat, even if you had not grown up Congregational Holiness.” The King must’ve known when he prompted its placement on a table, I needed it desperately. A little something just for me. It was in fact, a reminder that the King knows the little things and the big things and is concerned with the details of my life.
I was in awe of the detail. The special Priestly Garments, even when we studied it, the details amazed me, perhaps it is because I don’t always see the details. A few weeks prior, we studied the covering of the priest, his role and all that surrounded his duties. We noted how all of that was a word picture of what was to come and we Martins decided we were glad we were living in the time of Grace, the time after Messiah. When we no longer needed “ginger cows” aka a red heifer to be purified.
I told them about the temple and the veil and how human hands couldn’t have torn it. I told them about words He spoke from the cross. I explained how crucifixion works and how Jesus died before there was an opportunity to receive the final blow leading to death. I told them this and reminded them over and over and over that the motivation for such a terrible thing was Love. A love like the world had never seen before. A love like no other. A love for each of them. A love so strong that Jesus took their place. He took my place. He took on the sin of the world.
As we sat on the balcony overlooking the fancy pool, a team of landscapers was already hard at work. They had been tasked with trimming the palm trees. The fancy pool of the fancy resort had dozens of them. There was a climber who sawed, like he used a literal saw, no plucking or pinching, those branches had to be cut away. There was a gatherer and a cleaner-upper; the jobs were many and I marveled at how there was a lot of work going into the palm tree trimming. Heavy duty work, the very thing vacations are not made of. They were focused and deliberate in their task, beads of sweat rolling down their faces. I grew tired just watching them.
Sentences constructed together to make a page and those pages made a story. The day an old house in Paris covered in vines came alive to me was a day that changed my life. Perhaps deep in the recesses of my mind that emergency appendectomy (it would be 17 plus years before I heard that word or knew what it was) and that smallest of girls helped to persuade me into a medical profession. Perhaps not, but one thing is certain, I always have and do love a public library. I could list the reasons and they include but are not limited to:
The Jokester continued, “Well don’t be coming home pregnant.” Now they both were laughing, and honestly so was I. I giggled to myself at their banter. I smiled at their lighthearted friendship knowing there was no offense given and none taken.
Recently Scott Martin began receiving a monthly parcel in the mail. The content of said parcel is most definitely of value but my favorite feature is the stamp on the top right of the envelope. I giggled when the first introduction to this monthly parcel yielded a batman stamp. From then on I’ve found myself looking forward to the choice of stamp atop his parcel. There have been, presidents, scenery, landmarks, and just for the eclipse last year, some eclipse ones, you can hold your thumb over the picture of the moon and it will eclipse. We kept that one and put it on the fridge.
I had attempted to discard them several times since the meeting but I just couldn’t do it. They make me smile. I feel nostalgic when I see them. I wonder about the mail they’ve carried across the world. What those letters might’ve said, who might’ve written them. I’ve wondered about the hands that have purchased them and those that have removed them from their parcels. I’ve even wondered if the spit that licked them might be analyzed to reveal the licker was famous. Perhaps JFK licked that 1/2 cent Ben Franklin when he wrote to Jackie. Far-fetched and symptomatic of a way too overly active imagination I’m sure.
there were any novelties of adventure in that bag. If it’d’ve been my purse she were holding, she could have reached in and pulled out a pen, a pencil, a permanent marker, a half eaten candy bar, a lint covered mint that lost its packaging, who knows when.
She pointed and then moved her hand to the right and said “Here is Myanmar.” She passed it to the left and it made its way around the circle. When it got to 12 o’clock, my seat, I held it gingerly in my hands, the crease marks indicative of numerous unfoldings and refoldings. I rubbed my hands over the paper, made soft by time and use. I marveled at the names of the countries, some familiar, some not, and I knew in that moment why she had that map. How she was able to pull it from her handbag as naturally as if it were a tissue or other items found in the depths of a woman’s accessory for necessities.
Priceless 