When you pass through

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you."* — Isaiah 43:2

This verse came back to me this week the way a song comes back — not because I went looking for it but because it was there, underneath everything else, humming.

When you pass through the waters. Not if. When.

I first sat with this verse the summer Earl was sick. The pastor's wife brought it to me on a card, handwritten, the kind of card people give you when they do not know what to say and a verse says it for them. I put it on the windowsill above the kitchen sink where I could see it while I washed the dishes, and I washed a lot of dishes that summer because when you are watching someone die you need something to do with your hands, and the verse sat there in the steam and the soap and the sound of the water, and I read it every time I looked up.

When you pass through. Not when you stand in the middle of the waters. Not when you drown. When you pass through. The verb assumes the other side. The verb assumes you are moving.

I did not feel like I was moving that summer. I felt like I was standing in the middle of the river with the water at my chest and the current pulling and my feet on the bottom and nothing happening except the holding. But the verse said pass through, and the verse was right, because here I am seven years later on the other side and the water did not overwhelm me, which does not mean it did not reach my chin, because it did.

The card is still on the windowsill. The handwriting has faded. I can barely read it now, which is fine because I do not need to read it. The verse lives in the place where the verses live, which is deeper than the windowsill and does not fade.

Lord, the waters did not overwhelm me. I passed through. You were there.