It Can Be Enough...

I see him. His hair is sweaty. Breaths come long and heavy in sleep. His eyes closed, rest in his very sinew. He finds peace. When he awakes his mind is the thing that becomes heavy. His heart the piece of him needing the rest his body now finds, and his searching will end in a courage he only needs to believe in.

I see him. Carrying more than his shoulders should. Small framed and big hearted. A softness that this life will do it’s best to steal, but a strength not from this world.

I see her. A spark half lit. A light bursting through pores. Ready. Fire in her bones. Love in every cell.

I see her. Frail hands. Bright eyes, and her mind gone. It washes by. Flashes of the present come in taking over and then they’re gone. He watches it happen. Close enough to touch but the feeling gone. One flesh peeling away to become it’s own again but age won’t fully allow it. It no longer remembers how.

I see her. Her heart is gone but somehow still has to go on beating from a place not yet known. Her arms are empty and heavy. So heavy. They never forget the weight that they were created to carry. The imprint of her very self. A gaping hole nothing will fill.

I see him. A shadow of what could be but the light in his eyes stubbornly refusing to dim. A story to tell but buried deep in a place that feels safe. The weight, it breaks him slowly. Piece by piece.

I see her. Her bones tired. She wants to steal it. The pain. All of it. She wants to scoop up every single bit of it. Despite all the effort she watches, as if in slow motion, as the pieces she has dropped are mysteriously picked up. Innocent they are, and they don’t even know what has landed on them. It nearly kills her. God knows she tried. She looks at them knowing they will feel it. She flexes. A mother’s response. No thought, just instinct. Other times all thought, and the mind weighs heavy. Her heart theirs, and theirs hers. Tied up in ways no human can adequately articulate.

I don’t see me. My body lost in the days, but I feel the ache of my soul and the turn of the seasons. My knees are imprinted. They have met the floor over and over. The posture of someone who knows she needs someone bigger than herself. The world coming for her day after day. The world coming for her precious children, and the battle rages.

The front short. Her heart wades between no man’s land and the enemy’s trench. Her hands always ready. Her eyes scan. Her feet electric. And the heart. It beats. When it doesn’t want to. It beats when it doesn’t seem possible to. It still does. Contract. Relax. Push. Pull. How does it do it?

The enemy comes. He is relentless. No breaks. No rules. Ruthless. The hate she has for him endless.

The sky is dark and He sees them all. He remembers the day he etched each of their names into His palms. My children. You are written on my very skin. And His light, the brightest of all, cuts through the dark. Shattering beauty. A release of all that breaks us apart.

A second of silence and He holds us here. In this space of reckoning. It can be fleeting, but it can be enough.

**

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will protect your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:7