Like fragrant oil...

Yesterday was a day that I don't know how to describe. There aren't really words, because I don't really understand the dynamics that were obviously in play around me.

I spent a large chunk of the day fighting back panic. Heart-racing, seconds from losing it, melt-down at any time, way amped up panic. Now, I'm not known as the most emotionally calm and stable person on the planet, but this was unusual, even for me. I don't think most of the people I work with had any idea, but from about noon on, my body was physically in overdrive as I worked to tamp down the panic.

And yet, in spite of all that, at the end of the day, as I was reflecting back on what had been, my mind was drawn to an odd sort of blessing with which I began the day.

A few years back, in a quiet moment, someone who at the time I hardly knew but who is now a very dear friend, poured oil over my hands, and marked the sign of the cross on my forehead in a moment of deep prayer that remains just a bit blurry for me. Since then I've seen her pray with oil in many places, and was not particularly surprised when it became a way that I prayed as well - oil poured out.

At Christmas this year, the same friend gave me a tiny sealed cylinder attached to a key ring, and a vial of oil with which to fill it. Oil of frankincense and myrrh. The fragrant burial spices presented by the magi to Jesus. I attached the filled cylinder of oil to my keys and carry it with me nearly everywhere I go.

Yesterday morning, before all the panic set in, I drove as usual to work. Instead of listening to music as I drove, I had opted for silence, and spent some time praying. My work environment can be challenging at times, and yesterday, as I parked, I paused for just a moment in my car to ask Jesus to walk with me through the day.

I have two sets of car keys, one on my main key ring, and a spare set on another ring. I'd used the spare set in the car yesterday, and my main key ring was in the pocket of my jacket. As I paused in the car to pray, I slid my hand into that pocket, encountering the keys. I pulled them out and noticed that the vial of oil attached to my key ring was strangely warm - more warm than it should have been from simply being tucked in my pocket in my cold car.

I had an immediate mental image of warm liquid pouring over me, of Jesus meeting me as I touched the warm cylinder. I twisted the top from the vial, tipping just a little onto my fingers, and quietly marking the sign of the cross on my forehead, lips, heart. Dabbing just a little of the fragrant oil on my wrist, where I knew the scent would linger through the day. And then, as I tried to seal the vial back up, it overflowed. Maybe I tipped it wrong as I was twisting it back together, or maybe I didn't, but in any case, as I rejoined the two parts of the vial, there was an excess of oil. Struck mostly by the need to mop up the excess before my keys could be returned to my purse, I rubbed it on my wrists, and absorbed the rest with my mittens.

I climbed out of my car, and headed into what proved to be a very difficult day.

And yet, simple as it seems, last night, and through today as I reflected back, I find blessing in that moment spent alone in my car. Blessing in the warmth and comfort of the oil. A reminder from Jesus in the sudden and unexpected overflow. Meaning in the scent of burial spices that carried with me through the day.

And I am grateful, that at the beginning of what proved to be a very trying day, a day full of attack and confusion and fear, Jesus met with me tangibly for just a moment. That in that moment I could nearly feel the warm oil pouring over my whole being, and not just being marked in the shape of a cross on my forehead, lips and heart. That he reminded me of his love poured over me and shielding me. Of the overflow of that love - it's abundance and fragrance.

I didn't know all those things in the moment. It's really only in looking back over the day that I realized that he met and prepared me for what was to come. But I'm so grateful that he did.