God is talking to me through a pedicure.
Well, no, he's not. Unless he is, and I'm missing it. Unless this bucket of blazing-hot water, and my dipping in my right heel is some kind of metaphor- still too hot; still too painful; too much. ow. geez. Pressing in further each time, holding it present a bit longer each time, wincing. Haha... no. God is not sitting right over there (pointing) next to my orchid, who is bloming hanky-white with six blooms, as though decked out for a quinceañera...
... while this bucket of too-hot water turns gray as I scrub away the death on my feet. My feet, which suffer for my equal-parts trifecta of 1) shoe laziness, in that I have purchased and worn exactly two pairs of shoes in the thirteen months since I returned to Florida, and the majority winner has been the flip-flops; 2) shoe hatred, in which I swear wearing closed shoes makes me breathe crooked (just believe); and 3) shoe anomalies, in which my only functional kitchen shoes appear to be culled each from one foot of a separate culinary-school boyfriend, neither of whom shared a shoe size. Maybe it's not so much breathing crooked as walking crooked?
Anyway. My feet pretty much live outside, and they look like they could swoop out of the sky and snatch my dinner out of a lake. So I'm sitting here scraping them with a metal thing (lips tightening as I ponder exposed blocks parmesan cheese), rubbing with a brush thing, between and on top of and under my toes, patting dry, slathering with a foot mask, even - I scrape off the death and remember the one time in my life when I know that God spoke directly to me. There was one other time in which I absolutely knew that God was speaking to me, as another person - a stranger - said words to me that were too specific, too startling. But it wasn't anything like that one time, when it was just me and God in a big room, and I mused aloud, only half-paying attention to what was coming out of my mouth, and he answered, and, though I'm sure his voice sounds in different ways, in that moment, I learned that his voice infuses presence both inside and out, and I knew what the holiness of God meant as a beckon to everything that I am and not a curse to everything that I knew of myself (so much can be packed into a fraction of a second) - I don't want that to sound gripey (though, tomorrow, I might); that one time, only one. It was profound. If it's all I ever get, it will be all I need. It is, in large part, why I could never believe that God is not.
What he said to me doesn't matter, at least not for the purposes of a three-o'clock-in-the-morning blog about pedicures. Maybe some other time. They were six words that cemented my life to God. The thing about the worst of my recent experiences is: I've begun to develop a keen sense of the sacred, regarding forcing my experiences into words - part boundary-development, part trying to regain my authentic voice as a writer (not so evident from this ramble-fest). Permission to not box everything into a story; a release of the pressure to perform, I guess, and the realization that I'm one very human and not-always-interesting and sometimes-self-indulgent voice without much power to convey things as deeply as I'd like, especially lately. So maybe I'll share those six words and their context; maybe not.
Either way: in this moment, I remember that moment, and, everything else aside (as much as it can be), I taste a moment of guarded gratitude.
Included in this moment: the fact that I can actually feel the air move across my feet now. Sorry, feet (and everyone who's been exposed to them.)
(at least they don't smell like parm.)
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