This past week I felt as if a weight had glommed onto my soul. It grew as news trickled in, as I learned of disappointments and frustrations that are far greater weights to those who actually carry them. There is no helplessness greater than wishing I could bring relief, provide a solution to someone I hold dear, but knowing that I cannot.
A friend’s work ended last October, and now struggles to find a job sufficient to support a family while companies cut their payrolls. Another friend has been accepted into a graduate program for which they are wonderfully gifted only to find that funding (outside of crippling loans) is virtually nonexistent, so now wonders what to do next. Another feels stuck in a job that doesn’t quite fit, in a city that isn’t really home, in a place where busyness has conspired to keep close friendships at bay. Another feels drained by chronic pain, and medications that sap strength for part of each week. Another feels hurt when her husband uses cutting humor against her, and “playfully” mocks the sickness she endures with her third pregnancy. Another often feels overwhelmed, as a single, trying to make a difficult transition as part of being faithful in their calling.
Last night before bed I read this poem by Vassar Miller:
Thorn in the Flesh
Light comes again
but sometimes
falls at crooked angles.
Now there is song,
but sometimes
the silence conducts it.
My days are full
but sometimes
only of your absence.
I have been healed,
but sometimes
still the whole heart hobbles.
I have hope, but sometimes find the waiting too painful. Especially when I wish I could wish away the difficulties and disappointments, but only add to them with my frustration. “I am a believer,” Bono said. “It’s hard to be a believer.” That is the reality—fully hopeful and fully saddened—of living in this in-between time, between the coming of God’s kingdom and its consummation. Nothing matters except Christ’s kingdom, and because of Christ’s kingdom, everything matters.
Source: If I Had Wheels or Love, collected poems of Vassar Miller (Dallas, TX: Southern Methodist University Press; 1991) p. 131.