How can they listen when they can’t even see?

He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so they can neither see

with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts,

nor turn—and I would heal them.

John 12:40

Dear Me,

Soon you’ll go on a trip to Arizona with your parents. You’ll eat candy shaped like a cactus, and on the way there, you’ll fall asleep during the best dinner of your life. But on the Sunday of that trip, you go to church, and there you see her: the lady whose eyes won’t leave the cross.

It’s not that she’s looking at Jesus, it’s how she’s looking at Jesus, and it will soon become a memory you store with other trinkets of your past. You stand in the beautiful Catholic church and then kneel and then you sit, each position an opportunity to stare and see what she sees. But you don’t see it. You hurt from the hardness of the pew, and are so bored, the priest could be reciting lines from Home Alone II and you’d barely notice. What is it with this woman? Why is she so captivated?

It's the penny in your pocket you rub recklessly during future Masses. You sit as an adult, still slightly bored, and come to appreciate how bored and restless others look too. There’s a whole lot of you there only to please other people in your life, and you consider seeing if a few others want to go out for brunch afterwards and make a list of all the other places you’d rather be but can’t.

This goes on after your Catholic wedding and after your daughter’s Catholic baptism (five years too late. Sorry, Mom) and will continue until that night when everything is dark and hurts harder than a wooden pew. It’s the next day when you realize God has given you what that lady had all those years ago that you’ve been quite deficient in all your life—eyes to see.

It’s a beautifully cruel joke, really—you desiring to break down and explain the truth of what you know now to a whole group of people who only want brunch.

Right now, things are bad, friend. The whole world has finally lit the match, and all the things Jesus has said are playing out in fleshly form. You watch the chaotic dance, the horrible theatrics, the reality of evil gnawing a heart like teeth through an apple. You want to stand on your box and shout the words you read every day, the Word of God, but how can they listen when they can’t even see?

Maybe that was what that woman saw all those years ago. Maybe she saw these little bits of hate like cat o’nine tails in flesh or nails through wrists. Maybe her vision spread further, spread through to where she could see the party, the one where she’ll sit with Jesus and all the others, this nightmare life a mere blink and not even worth thinking about anymore.

You can’t wait to meet her.

Talk soon,

Ericka