Jeweled Breadcrumbs #4 : nothing can touch you where I am
“I first saw God when I was a child, six years of age. The cheeks of the sun were pale before Him, and the earth acted as a shy girl, like me.” When as a middle aged adult i read those words, written in the late 14th century by St. Catherine of Siena, they eased into me like a cool drink on a blistering summer day.
No. i did not see God when i was six years of age but i cannot remember a time when i was not in conversation with Something More that eventually i came to call God. And, when i was a child there was a moment, like St. Catherine’s, i too was touched inside by a strange and soothing grace. My child world was erupting, as it frequently did, and, there was Something More that changed me forever.
Breadcrumb
i will never know what travesty i traded. Considering i was a straight A student, completed all of the chores listed on the legal size yellow sheet of paper, mostly tolerated my two younger brothers and tip toed on invisible egg shells so as not to incite the winds of rage and flood of fear that frequently stretched the walls of my childhood house. i must have done something despicable. i was ten years old.
Storming to the top of the stairs i let my venom fly to my father, “i hate you. i wish you were dead,” then slam my bedroom door and bump, smack into my inconsolable self. Somehow i am drawn to step close to the full length mirror hanging inside my door. Peering past my tears and blood stained whites, seeing through the green and gold flecked irises, suddenly my screaming self is still, utterly and completely quiet. For an instant? An hour? Time and pain stop but i am not annihilated. From deeper than deep voiceless words ring through my body, “Nothing can touch you where I am.” And there is peace in an impossible silence.
On the heels of a brutal beating, my father’s fury is transformed into fire that does not consume. From the midst of my suffering Something More opens the door to extraordinary possibility and i am as “a shy girl.”
With every cell and space of my being i know that i know that i know, this is true. “Nothing can touch you where I am.” Carved on the tablets of my heart these words are my refuge. The seven voiceless words forge the sanctuary to which i return during every subsequent beating, beatings that no longer touch me because i am touched by the depth and breadth of Something More, “Nothing can touch you where i am.”
Now let me be crystal clear. i was not dreaming and i did not hear the seven sanctuary words as of someone standing beside me and speaking. No. The voiceless words rose from a mysterious source; no thing, no place my mind can grasp. The quiet that accompanies the seven sanctuary words is more intense than the beating. The knowing they bring is more immense than my imagination. But i was ten and had no need to explain it then. It is good enough to know with unswerving certainty, the source of my security and safety is right here, inside me. “Nothing can touch you where i am.”
Thank you for reading these words,
written by grace and the grit of a real human. Debra Asis
INVITATION — will you join me tracing the trail of Jeweled Breadcrumbs? Please add your stories of Jeweled Breadcrumbs in the comments. I will respond.
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The assignment that brings me to the writing of these words is to unapologetically tell the story of how God nudges, cajoles, drop kicks and masters me to be the real human being that I am … becoming … following God’s Jeweled Breadcrumbs. My daily writing challenge for 2025 is to share the Breadcrumbs with you.
You may also visit me at https://www.debraasis.org/
