Tilting
I tip my head one way and my life is over-full with good things. I tip it in the other direction, and I want to cry about how hard everything feels right now. Some of the desire to cry is a direct result of “over-full” but mostly it is because so many of my dearly beloved people are currently experiencing times of struggle and growth. I see the struggle. I see the shape I hope for them to grow into; I know how I grew through similar trials; but I can’t do the growing for them. I can’t even shout instructions without inhibiting exactly the growth I would most love to see. Instead I love them as hard as I can, and hope that the force of that love will somehow be carried to them and loan them strength. That, and I pray.
I pray for those in the midst of a crisis of faith. I pray for those who collapse in panic when the world gets to be too much. I pray for those who need to learn to soften when dealing with difficult people. I pray for those who drift, in need of a purpose and direction. I pray for those who need gainful employment and don’t have it. I pray for those stricken in health. I pray for those who lay awake in the dark, late at night, wishing sleep would come. I pray for those whose minds become a regular battleground between hope and despair. Yes I have specific people in mind for each of the “thoses,” Their stories are not mine to tell, but they all weigh on me and I wish I really could be the fixer of all things and the finder of all solutions. I am not. I am not. I am not. I have to repeat it to remind myself that I must not try to be. When I try to be the fixer of all things, then I am a “those” who ends up curled in a ball, panicked and fighting despair.
Instead of the fixer, I must love and pray. I must carry hope for those who can not carry it for themselves. And I must remember to tilt my head in the direction where life is wonderful and all my beloved people, all my “thoses”, are in a temporary struggle on their way down paths toward amazing things.