Broken Hallelujah

I know this room, I’ve walked this floor.

I’ve been given more than I have used before.

Don’t get me wrong, I am neither a genius, nor especially driven.  In fact, if you’re into IQ scores, I am really something of an idiot savant given how disparate are my subtest scores and personality.  To be even more honest, I am lazy.  There’s a blaze of light in every idea, but my feet lack the desire or speed to chase its development.

What an insecure way to admit to you I am all but pathologically insecure!

I have been blessed with ideas.  I sometimes see things more quickly than others and make connections that no one else considered.  I can map an intellectual dot-to-dot that excites.  If I knew how to leverage what I have been given into resources, I wouldn’t need to worry about how to afford groceries for my four kids, and maybe, just maybe, my husband might not feel noosed by the demand to provide.

Man!  I already sound like an asshole!

I do work, and I am not an egotistical or intellectual snob.  My pride rehearses how I will never be good enough, not how good I am… and I have had intuitive leaps, big ideas, and dreamed about Oprah’s couch.  How pathetic is that?!  I feel too small to develop an idea on paper, but waste time wondering if I could “do the Oprah interview without crying.”  Maybe I am not an idiot savant, but an actual idiot.

Somewhere along the line, my Hallelujah broke.

I’ve got some pretty solid hypotheses about the whens and wheres of this fracture.  If not an idiot, I probably qualify as an obsessive.  Quite simply, since then, I have kept moving through the labyrinths of family, degrees, career, marriage, children and church-

(Insecurity Alert!  Hard to rank a list like that and not worry about being judged. For the record, I chose a chronological strategy in regard to how the ordered events decanted for me, neither by priority nor primacy. I think I got a triple dip when I was in the Super Ego line…)

Okay, I confess, it’s mundane, but actually, not that simple at all.

What is?

Anyway, since then, whenever it was when my Hallelujah broke, and now, as average as is my monotonous experience, I suffered a series of refractures over space and time like psychic mini strokes.  My spiritual muscle and faith atrophied enough to convince me that I was broken.

I did not play a special chord, I did not see the light, and I was tied to a kitchen chair.

I became a teacher.

I became a wife.

I became a mom.

I became a Christian.

Worse than a traitor, I cut my own hair.

I stopped risking dreams and developed others instead.

It got to the point that nothing was on my tongue.  The acrid waste triggered my gag reflex in spasms of intense self-loathing.

I risked nothing for security, and broke both my identity and Hallelujah.

As blessed and God-given has been my work and family, they’ve been something of a vacuum too.  There’s no enough to fill the resource needs of my children and life.  Were I to do nothing else ever, there is not enough of me to do the job completely or well enough to satisfy the call.

So I have stood frozen in the snow, outside Grace, apart from the warm Fire, and done nothing else anyway.   I willingly deferred my own development for the least noble of reasons, the virtuous excuse of raising a family.

You’re smarter than me, and I know you know what happened.

My personal deficits caught up to me.  I began to perseverate on my limits and laments.  The inertia conditionally drained me with more suction than a vampire.

I confess the stillness has been an eternity of long nights.  I tell the truth, I didn’t come to fool you.  I still feel the shadow darkness.

It wasn’t until a recent series of events immersed me in the song “Hallelujah,” (see links below) that I realized just how broken and lonely was my Hallelujah.

My spirit had become mute.

As I began to study versions of this song, and the scriptures to which they allude, I had the epiphany that it was not my brokenness, but my cower that kept me from the risks of vulnerability and the authentic praise of being.

I have become convinced that it does not matter if I have anything important to say, simply that I risk saying it.  It doesn’t matter if you read this; it matters if I take the time to write it. It’s enough for now to bridge hazard and lift my voice.

And even if it all goes wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of song, with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.

Links to versions of” Hallelujah”

Leonard Cohen

Jeff Buckley

k.d. lang

Links to versions of“Hallelujah” lyrics

Leonard Cohen-  http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/leonardcohen/hallelujah.html

Jeff Buckley-   http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/hallelujah-lyrics-jeff-buckley/d0720188d8c780ff4825688400270d36

k.d. lang-  http://www.lyricsbox.com/k-d-lang-lyrics-hallelujah-gl4l8cm.html