Thursday, November 9, 2006

My dearest God,

Today I received the letter I have waited to receive for years. With it came joy and sorrow, ache and rejoicing. I just read it.

Looking back over time there are some things you wish you had handled differently. Decisions, actions you would change. But they are forever carved into history. No revisionist can change it.

Sometimes, perhaps all the time, you make decisions based on what you know, where you are, what is happening at the moment, and the urgency with which you are urged to decide. You weigh the cost factors, sometimes quicker than you would normally do, then you act. At that precipitous moment time literally stands still forever. It's a time marker, a history making moment, one to which you will return hundreds, maybe thousands of times.

Sometimes decisions that you make are right, but they cost you everything. And then, you live life one moment after another. You feel heavy, God, so heavy, but you put one foot in front of the other. You gasp for air praying there will be enough for you to breathe. The darkness is so heavy upon you, you wonder if you will ever see light again. You have not the energy to even cry out to the only One who can help. But somehow inwardly you know you don't have to. The One, the Holy One, God alone, knows everything including your deep pain. You function by trusting that the next day will come and somehow you will move into it and out of it into the next day. You never think of the future. You just breathe in and out, in and out, praying by God's grace that the air is filled with God. You live by trust only.

And then one day emerges into another, then a week, a month, a year of trusting. Life returns, one experience after another. Your tears turn to laughter and joy. The light has won. The sorrow, the deepest sadness of your life, remains tucked away, never to be released because to do so is to let go forever of what you have already lost. God sits with it, holds it forever.

I waited years for my letter. I now hold it in my hand. Trusting.

You answer a mother's deepest prayer.
You teach trust along the way.
You whisper affectionate words
of hope, love, patience.
You stretch us out,
realizing that a situation
can render us helpless,
caught in a web of darkness,
so small
you think
you can never fight your way out,
or have enough air to breathe
in the fight.
But something happens,
you find God inside the black sack
and God says,
"let me help you."
And the crawling out
teaches you.
You never do it alone.
The light wins every time
and inwardly,
in the deepest recesses
of human life,
you know it.
Clinging to sacred air
lifts you out and upward,
another soul captured
by the only one who can.
Alive again.

I remain yours forever, Andrea