When the inside has crumbled,
how can the outside still stand?
This question I ponder,
as I survey the devastation within me,
left behind by the loss of my mother.
Strength, courage, comfort and joy,
wander aimlessly amidst the rubble.
Shell-shocked little children,
groping in the dark, searching for the light.
While anxiety plunders me, unabated.
It seems implausible that the whole edifice hasn’t come crashing down.
Flesh and blood, so solid and heavy,
suspended by what:
determination, will, fear?
keep me standing lest I fall, never to get up again.
or faith, hope, love?
a cord of three strands not easily broken,
invisible and difficult to understand.
Time heals all wounds,
and time turns everything here to dust.
Our lives sung out to a constant refrain of goodbyes.
Now a chorus of sorrow,
but tomorrow voiced with a strain of sweetness,
and eventually full-throated shouts of eternal joy.
The aimless will be reoriented,
and the dust will be reanimated.
What is now suspended around a fallen core,
Will be enlivened into life forevermore.
~FS
Prayerful Life 