Psalm 139

In high school I memorized Psalm 139 and fragments and verses from the psalm have accompanied me ever since. "O Lord you have searched and know me" and "I am fearfully and wonderfully made." "Where can I go from your presence? If I go up to the heavens you are there; if I make my bed in the depths you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea..." Different pieces of the psalm have surfaced from my memory at different times as needed or as a surprise.

One line pulled me up short several months ago... years after I had dismissed it simply as connective content in the psalm. This line goes as follows: "You hem me in, behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me."

Until this past fall, this line evoked some vague notion of God as my mate, my protector, or even my Hip-Hop 'posse.' Talk about Trinity: he had my back, his hand on me, and was out front running interference as well. And this fit with my understanding of the psalm as a whole. It is filled with movement, and I've always attributed movement to this line as well. As I travel, my posse God has me covered.

Then I began to overhear how I was describing myself to anyone who would listen: I said I felt trapped and more than trapped: completely unable to move. And when I turned this immobility into a complaint to the divine, God whispered just one line from Psalm 139: "You hem me in behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me."

The therapist I've seen over the years would probably be relieved to know that I'm not hearing actual voices, but this line from 139 knocked me back onto my heels with all the force of personal address. And I think I now know the reason: God.

"You can't move, Kevin, because I won't let you. I have hemmed you in behind and before."

In an instant, this verse I'd merely gone through the motions to memorize became terribly clastrophobic. I was trapped because God had stopped dead immediately in front of me and was just as close behind - leaving no wiggle room - and his hand on me suddenly became heavy rather than light and reassuring.

"Why?!" I've now flung back at the heavens. "Why, God, have you so constricted my movement? Why?" And close behind this question was another: "How long has this been going on?" It is not that much of a stretch to say that this God trap had been slowly tightening around me for more than seven years.

Needless to say, this deeply disturbed me. On the one hand you could interpret such a God trap as attention. On the other, though, this immobility even if God is intimately involved is terrifying. It was as I mused on both these interpretations that another image came to mind: the picture of one of my own children in the days after they had learned to walk and run, but still had no real concept of danger. I remembered time and time again when I had to wrap my arms around one of them and not let go because where they wanted to go was out into a busy street or toward a cliff or a steep set of stairs. They screamed and fought to get free, to be able to move, but I saw what they couldn't yet see and refused to let go.

I may be mistaken, but I think this memory of holding onto my children might also be God speaking to me - God giving me a glimpse of what could true not just for my kids, but for me as his child.

"You hem me in, behind and before; you have laid your hand on me."

Someday a thank-you will probably be in order.