The small voice...maybe should be referred to as the "heart voice".
It has always been there...as far back as I can remember. Even when I didn't know the voice...He knew mine. Even when I didn't even know He existed He walked by my side.
There is not much I remember about my childhood...and sometimes I wonder why that is. I wonder sometimes if I clicked the "save as" button or if He did. I know He has often had his hand on the delete button. For this, I am sure I need to be grateful instead of wondering if something is wrong with me because I can't remember.
I am sure each of us has attempted to remember back as far as we can...to the very first memory that etched its marks on the brand new slate of granite of our memories. For me...these very first memories are what I believe have had their most profound effect on my view of our heavenly father.
It is funny how I cannot remember much at all....but the very few memories that I have of being a very small girl have details with such clarity that they could have happened just yesterday.
I can remember in detail....
...laying beside my dad on the living room floor (propping my head in my hands just like him) to watch "Godzilla" on a large, wooden, floor model television when I should have been in bed...not wanting to go to bed because I was afraid I would miss seeing him when he left the next morning....
...running from the bumble bee that seemed as if its sole purpose for life was to attack only me and searching for my daddy to protect me and he was nowhere to be found...
...riding on my tricycle around the metal support poles in our basement as my dad stood at his workbench as he completed whatever workshop task he had assigned himself for the evening...riding around and around in circles not doing anything else for fear if I did....when I came back he would be gone...as so often he was...
...sitting on the floor beside my bed (covered with a pale pastel-pink bedspread) with my sister, arms wrapped around my legs, as dad storms into the room...throwing the door open so violently that the doorknob is embedded into the wall....then crying into his kneecaps arms wrapped tightly around his legs beggin him not to leave....
...standing at the top of the stairs of our split level house, in my very thin white night-gown with lace edges and tiny yellow flowers, crying for daddy not to leave (for the very last time)...
....and that's all I remember.
I remember being afraid more than I remember being happy......
Even the happy times always had a subtle, underlying message of tension....
Was it just my personality....I don't think so....not at 4 years of age.
How could the dad you love, whom you cry for every morning when he leaves for work because you don't want him to leave, be the same father who scares you as well? The only hugs I remember from my father were the ones I received as I stood at the top of the stairs each norning...they were not huge hugs...but they were my hugs. How could he leave and not come back...I did not understand.
Of course, the older you get, the more you experience, the more you realize people have their own personal reasons for doing the things they do and oftentimes have the own justifications for it...but one thing I will NEVER understand is how someone who is supposed to love and care for you would find it so easy to leave you. Find it so easy, from that last moment of just dismissing you at the top of the stairs.....to no longer give hugs, kisses, or I love yous.
I am older now, with children of my own, whom have had to experience the same plight, and my heart hurts for them.
I was introduced to praying by my grandmother (a devout catholic)...and the name of Jesus was mentioned in prayer...or I was told to "pray to Jesus"....but I was never truly introduced to who Jesus really was until I was old enough to start taking myself to church; to start delving...to start questioning...on my own.
I have come to know a Jesus that others have told me about...but I am still working on the Jesus that is really "real" in my life...learning how he operates...his personality...trying to relate to Him as my father...and this if very difficult.
Very difficult....
Very difficult.
More so, I think, it is taking a lifetime of work to trust Him....to trust that he is not going to wedge doorknobs into walls...or walk out and not come back...or make me always wonder how long he is going to stay or not stay this time...or "what can I DO" to not make him angry so he won't leave.........
As I remember back though....in each situation...I recall a still small voice telling me....Chrissy (my nomen until I was about 7)..."Shhhh....it's okay......it's all okay"..................................and that would be enough.
And still to this day I am always looking for that still small voice...........it relaxes the mind....it comforts the soul...........whether you are 42................or 4..................
I depend on that still small voice
