There is not a single living creature who can make you safe. This is good news.

I can write this today, in the breezy wake of a good night’s sleep and docile plans. But this afternoon or next Thursday, when heat lightning streaks my brain again, I will wrangle this reminder like a feral dogie.

Like all God’s gangly children, I have spent my life striving to feel safe. If I weren’t so grateful, I would blame my parents for my unrealistic expectations. I can’t talk about this with many people — twitchy pupils tell me I’m scratching delicate surfaces — but I grew up on an eagle’s nest of tenderness. 

This is a statement of fact. I was unconditionally loved, unworried about my worth, even well prepared to be dented by diabetes without falling to pieces when I tasted grown-up pain at age nine. Ours was a world of hymns and calico, exuberant ideas and tote bags breaking from the weight of the fifteen-book library limit. There was safety and strength, willow trees and salamanders, tears on Easter mornings, an Italian song as I fell asleep, an ark of animals to celebrate my accomplishments. 

My heritage is a gasping wonder.

But if my parents made it simple to believe in a loving, gentle God, they did not make it easy to walk among God’s children. 

It’s not that I expected everyone to be as sweet as my folks, not consciously. My Mom, with Brooklyn jostling through her veins, did her best to prepare her bumpkin daughter for beyond. 

“Then stop looking at everyone,” she urged when I reported, aghast, that my splatter-paint smiles were not returned on the college quad. “He’s your professor, not your friend,” she sighed when I lamented Dr. Weedin’s invincibility against my surefire sweetness. “You do not need their reassurance!” Brooklyn elbowed to the surface when I ran down hallways banging doors, rapping my knuckles bloody.

And always: “Only God can be your God.” This was the best news. This was terrifying news. This is the good news I’m still digesting like a brontosaurus.

But there are so many massive mammals in the landscape of a life, big game who keep me in the Certainty Safari. If I can just find the lover or the leader or the seer who can utter the once-and-for-all, I can know I’m okay.

Okay?

The boy with the big heart can bubble-wrap me against age and ugliness, properly princessing me until fear sinks to the bottom of the final sea. If I am loved for all that I am, I will never be alone, not if my vision fails and my sweetness sours and all the words take the last train to tomorrow.

Okay?

The boss who believes in me can ensure I will always have a purpose and a robust insulin budget, that my love and labors will never return void. If I am seen for the shining striver that I am, I will never starve for meaning, not if I am tired or thick or take a week off to read and sing Italian songs.

Okay?

The readers who vibe with me can guarantee that, despite all my fears that I am a self-serving ego tyrant with a greasy Messiah complex, I am a torchbearer in this brokenhearted world. If I am told that people need my words and warmth and salt, I will never eyeball the abyss, not even if the angels invite me.

Okay?

The mother who adores me unconditionally can iron the wrinkles of my brain, just as she did my floral jumpers. She can understand me better than the angels. She can inoculate me against anxiety, Wild Woman swallowing the ocean, digesting the salt until I am safe as a sparrow.

Okay?

Irrevocably okay?

When I first heard that word — “irrevocable” — I gripped it like a handle. If I could find its secrets, secure the permanent markers to write my story, I could rest assured for the rest of my days.

But the handle snaps off, a comic pretzel rod where I expect steel. It is a word not of this world, a key to a door sized for angels, not sparrows and daughters. 

This is good news.

Perhaps my extended stay in sweetness made me anxious for a nest in this world. My petulant body has given me a sweet tooth for security. But this is a species-wide affliction. We come at this project down as many roads as there are angels to block them. 

Every living creature is trying to keep her vest on. Our stumpy fingers grab handfuls of safety pins — here a kudo, there a declaration of love — but the thing won’t hold. Our hands are covered in salt. The morning’s reassurance gets zapped by heat lightning. 

Our softest comforters say the wrong things, or narrow when our grief is broad. They disagree with us, or disappoint us, or fire us, or dare to die on us. We will be shaved like ice, grated over the ocean, alone at last with the only two voices that last.

We will be terribly grateful for the terrible good news.

Only God can be our God. Parent and Lover and Reader and Way, God speaks the safety we are scared to hear.

Everything may go wrong. Everyone may scatter like sparrows. Every pillar we grip may turn to salt if we look at it too long. 

Every promise will be kept.

There is harmony in this hymn, hinky and breathless. Under God’s vest, next to God’s heart, our own little voice stammers. Under our fears, next to the strong angels, our own little voice reassures us. 

Under the sky, next to the mystery, our own little voice sings promises.

At last, we’ll hear all the other voices, as if for the first time, in the song of the safe.