I was in my late 20's.
Devan and I had been married for around 4 years.
I worked two jobs, one full time and one part time. The full time job was the breadwinner. The part time job was the insurance provider and hope of a stabler future.
I worked commercial construction during the day, driving to work in the dark morning, falling asleep at stoplights and often having to park half a mile or more from the job site.
I was a hod-carrier (mason tender) and ran the grout pump every other day or so.
The hopper of the pump received soupy concrete from the trough of the cement truck and vigorously forced the grout up through a 4 inch reinforced rubber hose.
Up on top of a high block wall, I either straddled the wall, walked it or ideally used scaffold walk boards. The concrete laden hose, sometimes several hundred feet long, would retract and thrust with every cycle of the pump, roughly every second, and you had to somehow pad the hose at every contact point with the masonry or scaffolding to prevent a hole from wearing through from the constant friction.
Around 3:30, it was time to shut down for the day and I would jog back to my little Ford Ranger and speed home to get a shower and supper before heading back into town for work at the UPS hub at 5.
From roughly 5-10, I loaded semis with boxes.
When my head hit the pillow, sleep was only a matter of seconds out, surging in to pull me out into an irresistible riptide.
Consequently, I had little time for anything that was non-essential to survival, certainly not introspection.
Sometimes, if you ignore the act of simply breathing long enough, the odd arresting moment when silence falls is all it takes to become suddenly aware of what is sustaining your hyperactivity.
We lived in a cramped townhouse.
I was in the living room taking a rare glance out into the parking lot when a passing breeze animated the leaves of a small ornamental bush in the flower bed and then passed through the closed window into my soul.
Spearheads of ripples moved across my consciousness.
Something was happening to me without my direction or summons.
I don't know which direction the wind came from, or where it blew, but it passed through me, invisible and scentless, only apprehended by the dust it stirred.
Genesis 8:1 is the first usage of the word that we translate into "wind."
But the first reference to wind is in the second verse of the entire Bible.
"The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters."
In the previous verse, God who created the heavens and the earth is named Elohim.
In the second verse, we translate "Spirit of God" from the Hebrew "Ruach Elohim".
"Ruach" is one of those never-ending Hebrew gifts.
The most physical definition is simply "wind", but it also means "breath" and, most arrestingly, the "function or expression", elsewhere "personality trait" of a rational being.
It is in the second verse of the Bible that God has a thought. And the hateful placidity of the formless deep shivers in response. "Nothing" births something.
The Cause affects.
A dream is dreamed within a dream.
In Job 1:19, the wind takes it's form as "blast" or "tempest" and moves upon the house of the children of Job, collapsing the walls and killing them all.
At the end of Job, the sufferer's questions and agony and anger are engulfed and overwhelmed by the voice of God from out of the tempest.
In Mark 39, God held his breath and the Lake of Tiberius was calmed.
David almost certainly heard the wind in the poplars as the sound of marching and went to battle with the Philistines.
Elijah endured the wind that shattered stones and withered the gourd and was finally taken up by it.
In Acts, Ruach Elohim swept through a gathering of the longing faithful and came to live with us.
I was born in Oklahoma, where the wind never stops sweeping down the lane, dehydrating in the summer and relentless in the winter and where I attended a campmeeting where the evangelist recounted the testimony of an equatorial convert upon reaching God at last, "It's like a cool breeze down in my soul.", a metaphor that strikes me randomly on a humid summer day when a breeze falls from the icy heavens and soothes my fever and prickles my skin.
"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear it's sound, but you do not know where it came from or where it is going."
Next time you feel a bitter gale, a driving rain, a hot blast or a cool breeze, remember.
