The Sacred Familiar
JENNIFER J. CAMP
4 min read ⭑
I tell myself it’s delicious not to know what’s coming, not to have any answers, to feel uncertain about almost everything and yet feel grounded at the same time. I tell myself I can’t quantify beauty: the roses out my window, the decadence of red and pink and white. Flowers spill out of cracks in the path, from underneath rocks and in crevices too small to reach with my hand.
I am not lost here, sitting at the window, the house empty, my mind a tangle of questions. But I am alone. My recovery from surgery is making a ripple in plans to join Justin on trips to visit kids and family. So, here I remain, and I wonder about my aloneness. It is neither good nor bad, I’ve decided. The pace of a day, mainly solitary for rows of days, feels relaxing at first. There is no one I need to be in charge of but me. Yet there is also the wonderful, maddening curiosity of having time to think, wonder and dream more than I am readily used to. So, maybe that is good, I think.
How can we measure a day? Is it the assessment of the number of times we let the wind blow straight on our face, the sun’s blanketed smile in a sunrise, the creak of a bed as we stretch our limbs and hope we feel refreshed for what we hope will be a memorable day? Is that what we want? Is that what makes this day worth remembering?
I think of the days I remember, the catalog of moments from someplace deep within me. I open the closet door of my heart’s memory, dark and crowded, and wait for a memory to tumble out. It is not the memories of childhood, for those are richly detailed, filled with the scent of dirt and bare feet, dinners around a brown vinyl booth in our mobile home’s kitchen, the five children’s toes touching underneath the round table. The memories of yesterday and the day before, in comparison, feel nebulous, not fully formed and incomplete. These are the days of wondering if the person we remember ourselves to be is even close to what is true about us.
I am unsure if sitting and thinking was ever as pleasurable a pastime as it is for me now. I have so many questions, but at the same time, I’m less interested in finding their answers. I am content for my mind to roam around as it wishes and ponder what I don't know. I consecrate my mind and thoughts to God and am unafraid.
I remember the long bus rides to school and how my imagination became a lifeline, a curiosity and a friend. Looking out the window, watching the landscape of orchards and farmhouses change through the seasons, the roar of the bus as it thundered down narrow, one-lane roads, I imagined a girl near me, just out the window. I was the only one who could see her. She rode a skateboard that was magical somehow. With a single push of her foot on the ground, she could levitate it so it was always in line with the bus. She smiled at me, and I smiled back. She loved how I could see her do crazy things, like riding with her arms spread out like a bird and gesturing to me that, surely, she was flying.
Do the things we dream about that feel beautiful and good exist because they might be true someday? Do the wonderful memories of things we dreamed about, whether or not they were real, lived experiences, bring us joy because there is something in our hearts that believes in what we can’t on earth see?
What wonderful minds we have. To dream and think and ponder. How wonderful it is not to have answers for things but to have the curiosity to find them. How epic it is to dream of things that haven’t happened yet, but know that maybe we’ve dreamed of them because we will one day live them and find them true. What a world full of outrageous beauty: the swirly gestures of a leafy branch in the breeze, the majesty of a waterfall plunging to a hidden lagoon, the grimace of a toddler as she takes her first bite of a new food.
“Someday things will be as they should be. Someday, everything and everyone will be as God dreamed them to be, without death and pain and suffering and cruelty and fear.”
When I think about heaven, Jesus renewing everything that was part of the initial dream at the dawn of creation, and then I think about the vastness of that moment, how there will no longer be limits to the beauty or days or love or time, I realize how much comfort I find in what I understand. I say I love not knowing and understanding things, and I like to think that my faith in Jesus is enough that I don’t fear what I don’t understand, but actually, this is not true. I worry that in heaven, I will feel lost. I worry that everything familiar will be gone. I worry that I will be part of something so big, so amazing that, even though Jesus will be there, and the Father is there, and Holy Spirit, who is always with me, is there, I will be alone. I will feel alone.
I find such comfort in familiarity. Oh, God, help me. I vow not to be like the person in C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce” who does not want to get off the bus, for I want to be in heaven. I may find solace here; after all, humans, at their core, seek understanding and hope, creating both when they can’t find them.
In my imagination, I see heaven: vast mountainscapes, running horses, birds soaring, the wind in my hair as I continue to adventure with Jesus and roam, wander and explore. I am wild here. Not tame. Nothing is tame. All is beautifully itself, exquisitely perfect and whole. I am whole. I don’t question what is possible and what isn’t. I do not worry or forget. I do not strive or fear. I do not regret. I do not fight. I am turned inside out, the inside of me restored and new. I am unhidden. You are unhidden. We are free, good and beautiful.
You are beautiful.
As I sit here and ponder, I recognize how the boundaries here on earth, boundaries that I have come to find such false comfort in, will no longer exist in heaven. Someday things will be as they should be. Someday, everything and everyone will be as God dreamed them to be, without death and pain and suffering and cruelty and fear.
I am so very tired of fear.
The roses out the window are lush and full, too much to behold. Yet I want to devour them. I want to devour Jesus. I want my heart to be fully his. So I must escape my head. I must let my heart devour my mind so that it is what is in control, not fear, not rationality, not imagination. I forget everything I know and receive everything as if it were brand new. May it be so familiar, so beautifully familiar to me then, too.
Jennifer Camp is a poet and listener who delights in investigating the deeper places of the heart. She founded Gather Ministries with her husband, Justin; is Editor-at-Large of Rapt, a multi-award-winning digital magazine; and manages Loop Collective, a community for women who pursue deeper connection with God. She also wrote Breathing Eden and The Uncovering, a collection of her poems.
