Did You Choose Your Suffering?

 

Did You Choose Your Suffering?

(“Even if he killed me, I’d keep on hoping. I’d defend my innocence to the very end.” Job 13:15 [The Message])

“Did you choose your suffering?”

He read the old fan letter again. The words seemed
a continent away. It was one envelope among many,
and the question haunted him for all its implications.

“Do you think you suffer more than others?”

And his cheeks grew red, his forehead hot at
the words that, worlds away, exploded from
the page like serpent’s teeth.

“Do you know your suffering offends me?”

His fingernails itched, he reached for
the medicine, the resin that filled the fissures in his skin.
He could not put the letter away.

“I’ve meant to tell you for a long time.”

His feet shook, the foundations crumbled at
the sentence he knew was to come. He had read it
far too often.

“Did you know I was healed from head to toe?”

His brain sent spears across his temple
while his face burned with a pain that never
healed. And he prayed.

Do you know me? Do you?
Do you hear me? Will you?
Put your head on my heart.
Put you hand on my hand.
Touch my lips with the first light of dawn.
Let me know, through word or warmth,
that there is more to you,
to me,
than what you think you see
through time-locked eyes.
Come be the size of me
when the questions loom larger
than proofs and theorems can answer.

“Did you, though? Did you choose your suffering?”