When your heart is overwhelmed

When my heart is overwhelmed,
lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
(Psalm 61)

When the sky’s red fades, when the sparrow stops singing, when the soul aches for loss of years and beauty, when grace is lost in a maze of weeds and your companion and all your kids, your friends, are far away wrestling with their own problems, and your heart is a boat full of stones and you are finally honest with yourself about your own fears, anxieties, your own little addictions, and you wish for a bullet, “Come to me, I will lead you,” says some angel who looks like the gentleman gardener next door who always whistles and wears bright mauve scarves while raking leaves, or a doctor who smells like soap and knows just how to sit with you, or your partner who knows where there’s a trail to a mountain ledge where you can see forever, which is right where you stand. Here. Now. Seeing farther than you’ve ever seen before, seeing past the place where the sea meets the sky, into a memory you’d almost lost, something you want to call faith, strong enough now to lift you up, send you back into the human menagerie of sorrow and joy, of holding on and letting go, of howling and singing, of failing and failing and rising and falling into that pile of luminous leaves.

16 Comments

  1. You, brother in law have a unique and wonderful way with words, (word picture painting poetry or something)! Beautiful way of describing thoughts, emotions, feelings, ideas in how you see the world, yourself and others!
    Tks for sharing them!

  2. So glad to have made your acquaintance, for in it I find a translator. I don’t understand all your languages but today you spoke my mother tongue.

  3. This has lifted me up to fall “..into that pile of luminous leaves.” beneath a barren tree. Thank you.

  4. “…and ah bright wings” came to me after reading this for some reason. Thanks so much for sharing your words and heart. Gifts both.

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