Between the Newness of Life and the Slipping of Moments By Christie Havey Smith

The following is a guest post written by Christie Havey Smith, M.A., a Spiritual Director and a mother of three.  She teaches spiritual writing workshops in the community and through Loyola Marymount University’s extension program.  She has been a Youth Minister for St. Monica’s parish community and a volunteer at WriteGirl in Los Angeles, an organization dedicated to empowering teen girls through creative writing. 

I come from a long line of amazing women.  I had two great aunts with impassioned spirits.  In neither case did that passion find its way into marriage, but instead found romance in literature and in travels; they married poetry, theology and their gardens.  They gave birth to ideas and lavished love upon their sister and her children.

Their sister is my grandmother.  She was widowed when her three children were still small, and she rose above every kind of challenge a needy mother can face.  She is now ninety-five years old.  Her sisters and friends have passed away, and she is the last of the greats of her generation.  She is the Elizabeth Taylor of her community; when she dies it will be the end of an era.  And it will leave quite a hole in our family.

My grandmother is suffering from dementia – her passionate heart lives in a cloud of exasperating confusion.  She may still be here, but at times it’s hard to say if she wants to be.  Her loved ones pray for her peace, some even for her departure.  Yet most days my grandmother is more interested in talking about her next visitor than she is her final visitor.  I’m not sure how often my grandmother prays, but she hasn’t forgotten God.  And despite the heartache that comes to those who watch her in this state, I don’t believe God has forgotten her either.  Eventually the frayed edges of my grandmother’s emotional grip on the world will loosen, and when her breath is no longer needed here in this world, she’ll leave us.

In the midst of this long goodbye, I’m left with the apophatic notion: God is not death.

My grandmother sits in the emptiness of her life, but she finds that her heart beats on.  In the dark, lingering moments, in the gloom and confusion, in the desire for quickness of body and surge of breath, in the longing for music to return to mind without a struggle to remember the notes, my grandmother still wakes to a world that gives her cause for breath.  It seems that Wisdom is at work in her.

In the Wisdom literature of the Hebrew Scriptures Wisdom is referred to as the “breath” of God, and She takes a female persona – a rather exceptional event in a male-dominated world.   Wisdom, also called Sophia, speaks of herself in Proverbs and says:

I was at God’s side…

delighting God day after day,

ever at play in God’s presence,

at play everywhere in God’s world…

Wisdom seems to be at play in my grandmother, perhaps more than ever, as she points out intricate beauties, experiences love, moments of joy and adventures in her mind that take her to greener pastures.  One day she’s on a train to Washington.  The next she’s at the beauty parlor.  Like a child imagining their way through a cardboard box, she is still creating her life – not her death.  If ever my grandmother’s faith was shaken that has been forgotten – a gift within her dementia.  And I believe this makes her a miraculous vessel of strength; the washing away of her memories leaves her like a child, completely open to receive Wisdom.

And so my grandmother lives alone with Sophia these days.  She is not forgotten.  She has been chosen for this moment, like each one that preceded it.  It seems that my grandmother has been emptied into Wisdom’s fullness, breathing because Wisdom is God’s breath alive in her, until she becomes nothing more than this breath, leaving tired bones behind.

I am juxtaposed between the death of my grandmother and the life of my three small children.  I am losing one of the great women of my life, but I am raising another.  Adeline is now five, and Wisdom is still very much alive in her.  Only it seems to gush from her in the fullness, taking a more kataphatic expression.

When I was tucking her into bed recently she recounted a discussion we’d had about how her heart pumps her blood through her body.  As it all came together for her she exclaimed, “My heart beats even when I’m sleeping; I’m growing even when I’m sleeping!”  The miracle not yet taken for granted.

Then she asked me, “Mom, show me how big I was when I was a baby?”

I showed her with my hands, and then added, “But the first time I ever saw you was through a special camera that showed you inside my tummy and you were no bigger than a piece of popcorn.”

She tilted her head to the side and said, “Mom, when I was the size of a piece of popcorn I think God was still making me.”  And both our eyes simultaneously turned wet through our laughter at the mention of the miracle.

As I watch the rapid growth of Adeline’s beautiful little body, the gift of infant organs maturating into a healthy little person, I am overwhelmed with the idea that God is life.  And that God is always working on us, breathing life into the splitting of every cell, in the sprouting of every eyelash, in the collection of each tear and the release of every dewy breath of laughter.  Wisdom is at play in God’s world, in the blooming of a rose and in the blood pulsing through Adeline as she sleeps.  It is undeniable in the fullness of a young heart.

Here, between the newness of life and the slipping of moments, I am left with messages of Wisdom in both the emptiness and the fullness.  God is not done with me yet.  Wisdom is at work.  But will I recognize the mother of my soul while She’s tending to me in the dark sleep of my life and holding me against her in the shining moments?  As poet Joyce Rupp says, “Radiant and Unfading Wisdom… I seek you with all my heart.”