poetry: our bravest slim hope
Just when it seems
I have a foothold of control again,
organization of home, schedules,
contribution at work and study,
access to some personal time alone,
it all comes crashing down like a house of cards
and I’m reminded of the unstable veneer
that is life on earth.
When the deep fears and self-loathing
surround and swallow up my child
so he forgets who he is,
and forgets what love feels like,
lacks all confidence in his skills,
no trust for his caregivers,
and has not a friend in the world.
Definition of family, foundation, forgiveness and faith
all have lost their foothold in certainty,
lying now in shattered shards
with pleads of anxious adult-speak
as mere background noise.
No words
will comfort him, perhaps
only the presence of his wordless father, even
the father he says he hates,
and wants to hit,
is enough of a knot in the rope
to hold on.
It arrests me deeper
To think perhaps
he is right too.
Every fiber in my body and mind
wants to fix the problem,
make him happy,
redirect his focus,
apply the magic band-aid.
Yet the honesty to face
our deepest fears and insecurities
and, indeed, like Job,
to imagine them, express them,
and fire them back at God
with only our bravest, slim hope
that His presence is enough,
is a place my son teaches me to enter.
For if God should
abandon, or rain down fire,
or be preoccupied,
our final vestige of hope
is absurd.
My son is testing this premise daily.
He lives next to an abyss
of a hopeless world,
one created by the death of his mother,
the unmasking of life’s security,
while sleeping contentedly
on an April night.
He is expressing my own unspoken fears about life.
He is revealing the flimsy scaffolding that I have built the “good life” on.
He reminds me that with manna comes enough sustenance for every day.
My mortgage won’t secure me,
My education won’t stabilize me,
My strength and stamina won’t settle me,
My ingenuity and competency won’t save me.
The truth is that we are a blind moment away
from all former reliance’s being stripped away,
and we find ourselves angrily, sobbing desperately
before the presence of God, wondering, really,
if forgiveness, love, and provision
are going to be withdrawn too,
or, are they going to, really,
be enough to sustain us for
one more day.
PRH; March 1, 2002
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