You Are Electricity in My Brain

Photo Combined using photos by Omar:. Lopez-Rincon on Unsplash and Milad Fakurian on Unsplash

I’ve spent much of my life the writer in the group. Like a photographer, I capture life’s little moments, preserved in all their imprecise glory. Memory is a mysterious thing and mine, like yours, is imperfect. Much like the life they reflect, my memories are confined by my perspective, witnessed through tailor-made filters and presuppositions, and shaded and bolstered with time.

But they’re mine and I’m grateful.

He texted me from Atlanta as he walked through the terminal to his gate, “I have very distinct memories of you in this airport for some reason.” We’ve been in so many airports, so many times, and I could not readily pull the memory to mind.

But I responded with “makes me happy to know you think of me” and I meant every single one of the smiling heart emojis that surrounded the words.

“Dude you are all over my brain like electricity!!!"

I pictured myself coursing through his thoughts, a lightning bolt striking and careening outward in every direction. I pictured myself lighting up all the little connections in his brain, like a lightbulb turned on, flooding light everywhere. And I pictured myself warm but unsteady light, flitting about inconsistently in his brain, like the constantly pulsing sky during a heat lightning storm.

But it isn’t me that controls his brain. It’s his thoughts and how he keeps me there that was being revealed.

The truth of electricity is it exists everywhere, within all matter. If I’m in his mind like electricity then it means I’m everywhere, a part of all the thoughts that matter to him. And if this is true, I am blessed, indeed.

God Himself loves in this way. And it is not because we squeeze ourselves in or demand his attention and affections. God loves because He is love. We did not earn it, we are simply blessed to be able to receive it.

“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them. If I could count them, they are more than the sand. I awake and I am still with you.” Psalm 139:17-18