THE ACHE
Some aches arrive in the body. Others arrive in the soul.
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A thunderstorm loud and dramatic draws me from my bed.
The kind that reminds me of childhood summers in Kansas, where tornado sirens interrupt ordinary evenings and the terrifying beauty of lightning cracks open the sky.
I have nothing on but lightweight white pajamas. And still, I run down the stairs and out the door.
Barefoot, I stand in the front garden and lift my camera toward the clouds.
“Show me,” I audibly delight toward Heaven.
More honestly, I beg.
For nearly an hour I stand here, through one-hundred-and-sixty-eight frames.
Arms lifted. Head tilted so far back my neck begins to protest.
The profound and noticeable ache quickly arrives.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
An ache across my shoulders. Up the back of my neck.
The whole of me is stretched toward a sky that procrastinates in its answer.
The discomfort of longing in physical form is not unfamiliar. It has become the background of my life. But this is different. Front and center. Absorbing. Insistent.
Still, I wait.
Because everything in me knows what is coming.
Lightning does not cease to exist simply because we cannot apprehend it.
This is the innermost message I have, unexpectedly, come into my garden to take in.
Like healing. And hope.
Like the prayers we continue speaking even after exhaustion arrives.
Like the things we know are present somewhere beyond the magnificent, clouded sky.
Standing here barefoot in wet grass feels familiar—
The ache.
The waiting.
The lifting of tired arms toward something I cannot control.
The bold insistence through frame after frame:
Show me. I cry out.
Show me healing.
Show me evidence.
Show me You.
Show me that what I am hoping for is not foolish.
My body aches in ways it has quietly become accustomed to.
The background ache.
The ordinary ache.
The kind that settles into everyday life.
But something else, something unexpected is happening.
The ache of reaching up mutes the others.
As though longing itself rearranges the room.
This feels like the kind of faith we rarely talk about—
Not certainty.
Not even patience.
Attention.
An active kind of waiting.
The kind that stands in the rain.
The kind that soaks through to the bone.
The kind that risks disappointment, maybe even danger.
The kind that remains long enough to be utterly gratified.
Eyes that keep looking up.
A heart that believes something exists before proof.
Frame one hundred and sixty-eight. I am soaked through—
With rainwater. Exhaustion. Exhilaration. Hope.
And then, three gifts. Three flashes of impossible beauty. Proof of power. Creativity. Presence. Evidence not only of lightning but of something far more tender.
Through it all there is this strange sensing:
As I stand looking upward in breathless awe,
He has been looking down at me the same.
Not withholding.
Not absent.
Not late.
Simply delighting in my attention. Craving it to remain.
Maybe this is the ache.
Not pain, exactly.
Longing.
The stretching of ourselves toward something we cannot yet hold.
The weary lifting of tired arms.
The asking.
The believing.
The waiting.
Still beseeching toward Heaven:
Show me.
NOTES
A brief and beautiful thing about these photographs:
Lightning happens faster than the human eye [and cell camera] are prepared for. In darkness, the sensor is already working hard to gather light. Then suddenly, lightning interrupts everything.
The camera struggles to reconcile what just happened.
Brightness shifts.
Exposure bends.
Ghosted shapes appear.
Strange vertical shadows emerge as the sensor tries to make sense of impossible contrast.
In other words:
The sky overwhelms the lens.
And somehow, this feels strangely familiar.
Because this is what happens in holy moments too.
Something breaks through.
Something too bright for language.
Too alive to fully hold:
While I am looking up in awe.
He is looking down.
INVITATION—
When have you felt this?
A moment too beautiful, holy, painful, surprising, or alive to fully explain?
A time when something broke through and left evidence behind?
When have you stood waiting for something you could not yet see—yet somehow knew was there?
Have you ever felt soaked in wonder?
Or sensed, even briefly, that as you were looking upward in longing…something sacred was already looking back?
Human reflexes are often far too slow to fully capture the moment. What have you missed by not acting quickly enough?
IMAGE: For one impossible moment, Heaven and Earth seem to collide—not perfectly, not cleanly, but enough to leave evidence behind. A glimpse. A trace. A shadow of the conversation between storm and camera. A hard line down the center of jagged ones. A flash that rearranges something inside of me, inside of us.