I don’t know how to love something except to be devoted to it wholly.
I don’t know how to feel anything if I haven’t crushed it like a berry between my fingers.
I can’t bring myself to say I regret it. I’ve wrestled with some guilt over that- the fact that I don’t feel guilt- but I’ve elected to give myself some grace there. Would I force a wayward child to express regret after an adventure? Would I hold an itinerant at the point of a knife until they admitted that they felt remorse for seeking the heat of a fire in the cold of a desert?
No.
So I’ll borrow some of the kindness and grace shown me by a gentle, sweet, earnest man and trust that it is a reflection of the Creator’s, though I’m still finding it difficult to speak to Him openly. Or at all.
Lord, I don’t believe that You are pleased when I turn a scourge on myself. You have not required a sacrifice of blood for some time now- and we both know that my blood will never be clean enough anyway. I will therefore refrain from such a display of penitence and self-loathing which never brought You any glory or me any peace for as long as I’ve been old enough to be driven mad by shame.
I will stand here still instead. I will stand here until You touch me.
Please come touch me.
I am terribly lonely again, but this time it is a little bit worse, because I know what it is I could but may never have. I know that the part of me that awakens to a soft whisper or a flush-faced promise are not only fully functional, but good and powerful and alive. Laying that part to rest again when she had only just opened her eyes and had her first good stretch is painful.
Before I seal the door again she looks at me, wide, youthful eyes dark like smoke. I wonder, before I can stop myself, if those eyes will still be young when next I see them. If I see them.
“Is the swordsman coming?” she asks me.
“We don’t know that,” I say, somewhat admonishingly, in the tone of a parent who is tired of answering a tiresome question. (I use this tone to cover up something that is far less comfortable to contend with.)
“Do you believe he is, though?” she asks, ever hoping, enduring, believing, bearing.
I don’t have to think about my answer.
“No, I don’t.”
I shut the door. I lock it. I wonder if she can still hear me. I briefly consider shouting that she can believe that, if she wants to. If it helps.
Instead, I cry silently. I tell myself it’s the last time. It won’t be.
I wonder who I am now. I have to focus on the future. I have to get things done. I have to take care of the people who need me. I have to keep ahead of the disease that is so close at my heels, and hungry.
But Father, help me. The desert is vast and cold. I am so tired of being alone. I worry that there is no other way I can be, and I worry that I’ll always hate it anyway. That it will always feel like this. I worry that, because of the choices I’ve made, You somehow won’t sanctify me here anymore. That the clock starts over. That there are no more second helpings of grace.
It’s ridiculous, I know. You have said no such things.
But I am hurting. I am frightened. I am far from home. I do not know the way.
So I will stand here still.
If I matter to You, please come find me.
I will let myself be found.
That’s most of the trick of love anyway, isn’t it?
I just suck at that part. Please know I am trying my best.
daughter of storms 