Circles of Pain

Circles of Pain

(And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” Ephesians 2:22)

The pain has grabbed me around the neck today,
pressing its way into every thought,
cauterizing open wounds
and blinding every well-meant phrase.
It’s been that way for two days now
and I could not sing and could hardly finish
a walk in the cold February air.

I planned on writing something full of spirit,
full of life and daffodils rising before a hint of
spring.
Instead I record these words and know they have
little meaning to those who can walk through a day
with doubts cast aside like rubbish and last year’s
party ribbons.

There must be some sense to this all,
I used to say.
There must be some purpose that leaves me
more whole by the end of the day.

I planned on wondering about how we all
are just walking each other home,
but I can barely give myself permission to
leave the house.
I planned on igniting some well placed
lightning
to scare the pain away.

Do you remember how we used to sing
with
only a guitar and made-up songs? Do you
remember
how we used to walk on the same hills where
the cows grazed on late afternoons?

There must be some sense to it all,
these memories that take my time away
from knowing anything for certain.
There must be a way to embrace
the new wine the spirit brings and
share the cup like sneaky teenagers again.

I got up from a nap to write this.
I was hoping it would do me some good.
But I pause before each line and want to
lie down again
except that sleep eludes me and
the pain
makes me homesick for the dwellings
of friends
where we gathered in laughter and naivety.
I’d call you again, but it hurts to speak
about the transfixed nature of this circle
of pain.

So, for now, I’ll repaint my boundaries
with hopeful words of remembrance
and how good it felt in those days so many
decades ago.

There may be a space so safe that spirit
draws open the tears and reminds us
we may not have this chance again.

Once Creased with Pain

 Once Creased with Pain

(“As for Me, if I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all people to Myself.” John 12:32)

The day was wearily moving slowly,
eerily suggesting more than we could see.
But I had awoke too early to shatter any records
or remember any dreams that directed me gravely
toward an old headstone of a friend who once
was as enigmatic as the first few moments of
the silent breeze the cleanse my mind after resting
longer than I needed to, I was happy to recall her
smile after all. Now it’s locked in my memory the
same way her husband locked me into his own.
It was good to hear her babies lived with joy
mixed with tears, gratefulness mixed with questions,
sorrow mixed with a readiness to embrace something
more eternal than exterior views of emperors dancing
on their thrones.

We are all just jesters, aren’t we, trying to find our way home?
We are fools for fools’ sake, animals sniffing around the edges of
eternity.
It was good to hear words that let sorrow settle in like
a corporeal fog, something we could touch in the distance.
It all brings back to mind the days we sat around propane fires
watching the meat boil and the people waiting together,
giving away blankets and quilts, and saying the things we
would carry for longer than we knew.

We have learned to forgive ourselves of the behaviors we
learned to save us from the trauma we could not name.
We thought it was simply a sinful self that kept us addicted
to ways we soften the pain. But now somehow,
the crucified one has taken all the damage onto a splintery
tree, made that torturous cross his throne by which he
calls us to tell him the harm we could not name until we knew,
he felt it too.

How are we daily drawn by the magnetism of unreserved love.?
How do we imagine a place that soothes every reason we have to
push to the front of a line that will take the same time for us all.?
Ending at the entrance, all together now, we see the relief on faces
that once were creased by pain.

The Accumulation of Things

The Accumulation of Things

 

It is not the pain,
it is the accumulation of things.
And, I hate to complain, but today
the weight of solitude caused my knees to buckle.

Yesterday I received letters from friends who
have
melted my heart and let me into their own.
One, a glorious musician, air force navigator,
adventurer and conspirator in all things poetic and
spiritual.
The other, a widow. I attended her grief during her
husband’s final days and her son’s just one year later.
I was in over my head. But we stayed with her son,
her, me and the attending nurse,
until the light faded from his eyes. He was kindness
embodied, shoveling snow from the church sidewalk
with me when the drifts
were nearly high as our heads.

And most days the memories of these living friends,
these who for 25 and 35 years have never ended their
grace to me, their smiles encased within my heart,
a place reserved for fireplace talks and Christmas carol
variations. Most days they inhabit with joy my only alone.

But today it is the accumulation of things. Today
I wish for a finger’s touch on my arm, the kind that warms
you, and maybe makes you blush. The kind that pushes the
button to allow the tears to flow again. Today
I wish for the eyes that do not look away. The kind that
are lyrical, the kind that coax miracles from melancholy
without demanding faith of any kind.

Just like dividing an integer by zero,
solitude upon solitude becomes impossible.
A sparrow’s song outside the window breaks the
ennui for a moment. Maybe some carolers will call.

The Pain Descended Like a Metal Plate

 The Pain Descended Like a Metal Plate

(“There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God.” Ecclesiastes 2:24)

The pain descended like a metal plate,
boxed my head and locked it away. With
all the extra weight
the trail was longer than the day before.
My vision crashes like needles and fog,
I turn a corner and am startled by a puddle
from this morning’s rain. It had not happened before;
I hope it will not happen again.

I have asked before, and still have no answer,
where is the key that unlocks the crushing pressure
nearly cracking my brain. I’m given an
hour
a day for recreation and find time only to recline
to keep the fire away.

I would meet you for tacos, I would. Or coffee and
croissants. But no one knows the hours when the
warden unlocks my cell. I can hardly invite you to
my unkempt ramblings and misfired hope.

I would bring a bottle of wine. It’s true. Or your favorite
Irish whiskey. They are my habitual escape. I forget
I don’t have the combination to free me, and believe me,
I’ll laugh and smile for a while. But I’d rather grin because
I can move my head or my neck or my shoulder without pain
again. Still, I’ll bring the bottle.

Can I send this to you in the mail? It is too long for a text.
If you read it would you understand? Would you think it best
to
bring a chocolate donut to my door. You know why I have
not
visited you often enough, don’t you? You know how my
entire body
is imprisoned by the cold steel of a decade of pain.
You know, since I solo nearly every day, the time may
be short until, insane,
I stop trying to understand anything.

You don’t need to have the key to visit me.
You don’t even need bread. Give me the wine of
your company,
and a few stories from our friends.

Get Over It

 

Get Over It

(“So Lot chose the region around the Jordan for himself. Lot headed out toward the east, and they separated from each other.” Genesis 13:11)

They tell me to get over it,
they tell me to repent. The voices die
at night and
live again the
next day. They tell me there is a price
to pay. Get over it, like downshifting in the
passing lane. Get over it, though the embers are still
fanned into flame.

They tell me I have lost my way,
they tell me I’ve gone off the deep end.
They point out I chose the left
when I should have veered right all along.
I never minded where I lived,
I just needed the voices to cease that
ad-libbed their sermons on the back of broken hearts.

I searched for the invisible, sought and knocked
time and time again. I looked for the unseen soul
who knew pain as deeply as I; pain that rarely
is over.
I ached for ancient friends and sighed for enlightenment.
I cried alone under wooden pews,
I needed more than one visitor who would refuse
to accuse the location of my pain.

Get over it, the perfidy of imperfect lenses
could have been truer with more pauses and
less past-tense.

I was bloated with small talk, so I doted on
children’s chalk drawings. (They never left me
baffled by their silence.) For all the grinding of time
my head aches and
my heart breaks
over causes yet to be determined.

But today there were daisies,
today there were jonquils,
today there were poppies and
the sweetest nicknames for friends.

But today I’m washing in the ocean of love divine;
I’m bathing in the motion of earth and sky.
I hear the bells ringing the angels’ song
and miss a few who used to listen to the waterfalls
without defining their time or place.

George Floyd, I Did not Know You

George Floyd, I Did not Know You

(“After ten days, Daniel and his friends looked healthier than all the young men who ate the king’s food.” Daniel 1:15)

Will you eat the king’s meat,
Will you sit at the table of deceit,
Will you change your middle name,
Hoping it will sound nearly the same
As the swarms of modified eagles
Cackling like hens?

Will you visit the robbers’ den
Pretending it’s the temple?
Will you stand outside of it for a photo opp
To prove you are not the devil?
Will you kneel as an example
(on the necks of the devoted, no less)
of dominion you think you’ve been blessed with?

How long did it take for the blood to stop flowing?
How long did the air squeak like a dying balloon?
How long did you know there was not breath. He was
lifeless?

Will you refuse the king’s madness,
Will you fall on your faces and confess,
Will you join your tears in streets
Where blood stopped flowing, where the breath ceased
as the swarms of mystified people
pleading like moms.

Stay inside if you need too, stay outside if you want,
all I know is eight minutes is far too long to compress
a brother’s throat. Mingle your outrage with the grief
of too many removed from the scene, lives taken
unseen,
justice stolen like Macy’s front door and
peace bartered for projectiles piercing the soul

Of a nation broken and plagued. A nation only healed
By its own self-confession and sorrow. Today (and last
Century, and three before that) are the time for crying,
And judgement. 

And tomorrow may justice flow like
A river. Tomorrow may peace demand the rocks give way.

George Floyd, I did not know you. I know less of your anguish.
Teach us (we who stand outside cathedrals),
Rip us (we who sleep inside bedrooms),
Paint us (we who live so colorless),
Point us (we who navigate so well…

past our privilege in the famine of shame.)

Let us (fasting and sacrament) fully taste your pain. 

One Playmate Who Knows

One Playmate Who Knows

(“Isn’t it clear, friends, that you...are children of promise?” Galatians 4:28 [The Message])

Some days it seems the children do not
want to come out to play.
They stay inside measuring the hems of everyone’s
pants and dresses. No one confesses they would rather
skip a rope. The work is their burden, the burden is their work;
and wouldn’t God be offended if they ended just a stitch too soon?

Besides, the children outside do not care what you wear,
the bubbles will float wherever the wind delivers them.
The sprinklers will spray the serious toward laughter and
the moonlighters toward day.

Some days it seems adults have forgotten their childhood friends.
The days come to an end too quickly, the porches sit quiet and empty
while one man’s tears plead for someone to search their memory
and remember his heartbeat, imagine his throbbing pain,
look south, or up, or in, to find him again. All he is hoping
is one playmate who knows, so their own tears well up in
Summer-time pools.

He must have fooled himself. He thought it was always family.
He must have misspoke far too often, mistook the blossoms
for perennials. But they do not bloom here where he has been
transplanted.

Come find me, I am not hiding. I never was good at hide-and-seek.
Ollie Ollie Oxen Free, please come and see me. My green lollipop
has melted, stuck to the preheated cement. But every word,
every card, every letter, every vowel was always meant to tell you
I could never give you up my friend.

The sun is setting, children are heading indoors, and still I sit,
praying, hoping, crying behind the bushes so no one sees,
that you will remember the playful days when skinned knees
meant no harm, and funny bones were cold, electric, warm;
The days when hearts were mended before the next game of
marbles in the alley round our circles of dirt.

Beyond the Years

Beyond the Years

("But let us give thanks to God! He gives us the victory because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done." 1 Corinthians 15:57)

Do not march on in anger,
no need to parade in fear,
the triumphant procession extends beyond the years
that have held you down below
the sod of so many opinions.

Awake now, meet the day;
alive now, come and play in the sun
and join the immortal one who has opened every tomb,
emptied every grave,
and leads you, oh reluctant warrior,
in celebration you may not see, but fills the
reflections of the waters,
echoes from the planets to galaxies,
small talk in tiny cafes,
suspects of doubt along with
trumpets of faith.

The rich man's cave where he lay
is void of its treasure. There was no holding down
the apex of creation. Laugh at monster death,
cry at dying's destruction, but live, for life
is the gift, hidden in the earthy darkness and now
ablaze in the light of day.

These pain, these pains,
these bones that creak with age.
These pains, these names
that seem to upstage our hope,
our glory, our truest story while we
wait with poverty at our feet and
loss knocking at the door.

That day, that day,
mere hours away from the cruelest pain.
That day, lambs play
with lions and entertain babies
who we kept away from snakes in the garden
for fear.

Though this day may squeeze the breath from your believing,
though tomorrow a storm may rage unpredicted,
though politicians deceive, mega-seat theaters play
the movies we payed dearly to believe, and even though
the pins and needles sting like adder's poison

the reason to hope still stands like the world wiped clean
once it did all it could do to mute the song of all creation;
the life breaks through like high-speed videography
cracking the sidewalks in moments,
revealing the life that existed far before the
concrete of time.

Capella

Capella

(“How beautiful you are and how pleasant, my love, with such delights!” Song of Songs 7:6)

The eyes that see only love are never blind,
and never void of beauty. Only love,
only delight,
only the spinning of rainbows in spite
of the clothing clotted with mud.

The universe is a bridal procession
with the beloved awash in blush, embarrassed
at the attention, but drawn to the One
who sees her more fully, beneath the skin,
beneath the face of age,
beneath the trauma that pencils a smile on the face
that ached with pain,
and found joy again. The beloved
no longer shrinks or scuffs; she dances, while
everyone watches, and He just stares,
captured by one look of her eyes.

She is not the caricature, nothing like the satire,
she is not a newsprint cartoon.
She is fragile like paper, strong like ink.
She is romanced when others think she
is not worth the dowry that pays any price
to see love, to see delight, to see the palette’s spectrum
mixed and glowing like the Sun, like Capella;
she is many, she is one, she is arrayed in silence.

Selah.

They are one.

I Shall See You

I Shall See You

(“Now you are going through pain, but I shall see you again and your hearts will thrill with joy—the joy that no one can take away from you.” John 16:22 [J. B. Phillips])

Another night and another dream where somehow everything I attempt
goes partly wrong somehow.
Letters of intent that scare me out of my wits,
a plow that pulls me through the backcountry fences
onto private property where every eye can see.

Another morning when the pain wakes me early,
keeps me prone till noon and will not let go. A violent
season
that my brain invented, and no other brain can diagnose.

Some questions are impaled, some answers are so veiled
they mock the slightest turn of the mouth. Every phone call
used to send me
into broken twig apprehension,
and now that the phone doesn’t ring the
dreams
supply the same intentions, driving sleep from the cells
that need duplication. But the tiny thoughts that
still find expression
are turning like neutrinos undiscovered until
the atoms were sliced like cheese.

I will not talk of my faith, as if I possessed it like real estate;
I will not answer as if I owned anything at all.
I will not speak of circles unbroken when every chain link
seems to come apart at the seams.
(Like the disciples, I can huddle behind locked doors
as long as is needed.)

I do not see You well, and my search is even weaker;
but You see me, the weary and broken seeker.
I do not comprehend, I can barely compose a tune;
but You show up, broken and risen from the tomb

With wounds so visible there is no mistaking Your identity.
The room shakes at the intensity of fire that carries the ash
into rivers that run beneath our senses.

We will sleep again, dream again, and certainly
go wrong again and again.
But You-Who-See-Us again take our trembling letters
of resignation
and rewrite us again and again.

Mother Wings

Mother Wings

(“Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You kill the prophets. You kill with stones those men that God has sent you. Many times I wanted to help your people. I wanted to gather them together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you did not let me.” Luke 13:34)

I am willing,
I am ready,
I need healing,
I need hiding under
the mother wings of God.

When the mask of pain hatbands my forehead,
when icepicks stab my temples,
when every atom in my brain is unrestrained
and knocks against my cranium faster than the
clicking of cicadas,

I need a mother’s hand upon my brow.

I am fading,
I am waiting,
I need breathing,
I need bread and water
made my mother’s hands.

When the day escapes on my bed of pain,
when music shoots my thoughts inflamed,
when every friendship in my arc is unlisted
and no one knocks on my door, though I’ve insisted
I’m not strong enough alone,

I need a mother’s voice whispered in my ear.

The pain blurs everything; these words, the reading,
the vibrations of joy, the location of comrades,
until, though one or two occupy the square footage,
the world is a void filled only with the knife-crease splitting
my head.

I am stating,
I am crying,
I quit breathing,
I need prayer and medicine
made by a best friend’s hands.

I don’t care if they are feathers, or hairnets, or horsetails, or fingernails,
or silk, or satin, or gingham, or the Mass in latin or lingua franca.

Whether you speak or do not speak,

I need a Mother’s care when the world has been invaded by
avoidance and fiery pain.

You Cannot Outwit the Pain

You Cannot Outwit the Pain

(“The Lord was angry with Israel again, and he caused David to turn against the Israelites. He said, ‘Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.’” 2 Samuel 24:1)

It is impossible to outsmart the pain,
no matter your reinforcements, the arrows outwit your
finest strategies.

Rally the troops--and head, feet, lungs and heart
will still beat with the impulses; the grated shards of the brain.

Line up your best defenses, pray, sleep, cry, weep or sing,
and the pain will laugh once the amen is hummed; the sting awaits
the next unguarded thought.

The broken leg instructs the brain to crawl,
the broken arm presses the brain to scrawl,
the broken heart shatters the brain’s defenses,
and pain wraps it all with aching for the deep
and moats too wide to cross.

Suffering is only denied to those who throw their pain away,
who; anger and heat, judgment and fire, lies and deceit,
platitudes and bromides--setting the world ablaze to heal
the burn they will not feel.

You cannot outwit the pain.

But the aching know the pain is wiser, higher, wider,
and uncrossable. It is inscrutable and hidden behind
cupboards and bookshelves, prayerbooks and hymnals,
climax and nadir, silk and sackcloth, others and our own;
it will not retreat though we have assessed the enemy,
completed our military census,
and called its name out plain.

It is impossible to outsmart pain.
And perhaps that is why such willing wrists
took the iron spikes as a scepter,
took such abusive cries as a coronation song,
and cried like we all cry when pain makes us feel

forgotten.

Why have you forgotten?

It is impossible to outsmart the pain.

We Auction Our Hopes

We Auction Our Hopes

(“’Tell David that all I want for the bride price is 100 Philistine foreskins! Vengeance on my enemies is all I really want.’ But what Saul had in mind was that David would be killed in the fight.” 1 Samuel 18:25)

I wondered why the universe wouldn’t be placed like
a hologram before us sitting on the kitchen table.
Why couldn’t we put our hands upon the orb, examine
it with our skin on?
Why not orbit its perimeter, experiment with its trajectory,
change the refraction of light and realign the spectrum?

Isn’t that what kings and presidents, ceos and John Does
try to do every day?

We would make the rain fall on flooded plains if we could,
just to show the pains we’ve taken to rise to the top of the mountain
billions of years in the making.

I don’t have to hurt myself to see if I still feel pain,
that’s already been done for me. I could meditate all day in
the desert or
the forest
and be done in a moment to find the spike in my head that
now slices my heart.

I wondered why we can’t just be in the world
and not of it.
Why we can’t refrain from turning the dials and just
learn to love it the way the Master does. The Lover does.
The Mother does. The wild goose and the peaceful dove does.

I wondered what happens when the pain beneath our skin begins
to be the atmosphere we walk in, the ocean we swim in,
the dirt we dig in and the noise that never leaves us a moment
of silence.

100 foreskins, 200 foreskins; we auction our hopes and double
the bribes,
all because raggedy rulers decree a bride-price for
the guarantee of our freedom.

Smudged the Words

Smudged the Words

(You see, everyone will be salted with fire. Mark 9:49)

You cannot argue with the pain, wrestle it into submission,
make it understand the strain it has put on the simple admission
that life was hard before it came along.

It argues with every decision, it pushes you back upon the bed in the morning.
It says the shower will be too cold, shaving takes too long,
and the phone rings far too loud and often.

It buries your memories, mutes your love songs,
imprisons your prayers and incinerates your best intentions.

And then, passing someone groaning louder,
it insists you have no right to complain at all.

It whispers in hidden wavelengths, the way lovers keep
all their conversations to themselves. Invisible, it draws lines
across faces that once played with laughter, walked dogs before
and after a quick lunch with a friend. But jokes evoke silence,
and pets lay their noses on the lap of a human they used to know.

Pain sprinkles every day with edges, every night with dreams
where bridges are burned until morning turns the volume up again.

But pain cannot compete with a daughter’s surprise,
a partner with tears in her eyes,
a friend who sits, and only sits, more of a prayer
than the longest hallelujah or loudest speaking in tongues.
Pain is slain by a son who calls out of the blue,
and shares his dark painting too. And you both sigh
because you know you share the invisible side of a life
that ought to be easy.
Pain is paused when the letter is opened, the salutation
is familiar and the text scribbled so quickly that salty drops
smudged the words. And they stay embedded
in a single corner that pain once occupied as its own.

More Daffodils

More Daffodils

I wish the words could explode off the page in
an effort to explain
the blast furnace of pain
that eats at my ease within each
wavelength of my being.

A friend once asked me, after reading
my poetry,
“But where”, he said, “are the flowers and the birds?”
(and that was before the onset of fire-blades to my brain.)

Hidden deep in the suburbs, my walks are a chore;
living next to the mountains, I still saw less than more,
and the daffodils lasted only until the
next nervous tic in my mindless rearview mirror.

What I’m trying to say, to make plain,
is that these words are the tip of what is submerged
in sad electrical impulses that have lassoed even the
most lofty refrains of cathedral hymns.

Sunshine does me good until I go inside,
beaches make me happy until the door is closed.
It seems I’m predisposed to a setpoint I have not chosen.

And yet, I’m chosen and loved (human and divine).
But it seldom changes the flow of muddy ink that
paints me into these corners. I am pursued, not the
pursuer. There is love nipping at my heels.

But I’m boxed in, cowering and chilled, inside
dreams and visions I do not choose. A best friend
retreating, the better hopes receding behind the
vacancy hollowed by blackness and pain.

I would offer more daffodils if they would buy a longer smile,
more poetry if it would paint it all so clearly that

No one would offer solutions, pray my absolution,
ignore me, abhor me, but would
stand up for me when I said,

“I wish there were more flowers and birds
on my page than there are in my mind.”

Each Day is Framed

Each Day is Framed

(“Or else let them come to me for protection. Let them make peace with me. Yes, let them make peace with me.” Psalm 27:5)

When each day begins framed with pain
the sun is hidden in the corners.
Birdsongs are fragments of scratched paint,
the best thoughts are cracked and peeling
despite the finest efforts of restoration.

Sometimes I feel the need to explain, dip my
pen in the blackest ink
and begin again. In Prose. In Short Sentences.
In Declarations. In Descriptions that get to the
Point
of pain.

But I write between moments, through half-open windows,
while the earth is crammed with minutes I’ve wasted
waiting for abatement. Could I write in clinical paragraphs
complete with footnotes and citations
some might believe this artless student of doubt.

But the days begin and end the same,
my brain the biggest enemy. How God inhabits
the letters, the numbers, the synapses and numbness
is a question for others better than me. I do not suffer well,
do not joy in it, revel in it or find a sliver of meaning in forces
that keep me pressed to the ground.

I am a mere dependent, assigned to the edges of my art.
The craft I laughed so passionately is untuned in the corner
and silent. Still I must write, and write well, not excellent; but
true.

And many will question the frame, wonder of my faith,
(as I also wonder), and note the stains upon the painting where
the shadow of pain blocked the sun’s healing rays. And

Peace is beyond my reach, though, I should believe,
it still inhabits the first brushstrokes beneath the layers
of grey. I await the colors of the day.

No Power But Surrender

No Power but Surrender

("So you, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." 2 Timothy 2:1)

Once the pain encircles my day all advice sinks beneath the waves
while the crowds shout from the shore how nice the water is today.
I would float on the crystal Caribbean,
soak in August's alpine lakes
just to view the light from my old point of view.

There are huddles so small that electrons cannot pass through,
moments so long the birds and deer leave only their scent behind;
eyes have focused on silence overridden by bass notes never in the score.
The phone rings; another robocall selling me ways to pay for
an attorney. I would answer, but I've memorized his spiel.
Nights are too short, though syncopated with ghosts who
know everything.

Some of the specters are soothing and drink tea or enjoy my
abstract jazz; my bluegrass grooves.
While others are buckets of words, hot soup on a sweltering day,
undoing the therapy poured out in every lyric.

There are expanses so vast, though I have 2,000 friends,
I cannot see a soul or tree or the horizon where the day should end.
The sun sweats. A high growl lassos the sky and declaims the regrets
that time relentlessly reminds each pulse of my brain.

I would sleep in the shade on a day like this in an East Bay meadow
found only by weaving past the eucalyptus, descending to the stream
and crossing the fallen log waxed with frogs and water and time.

But yesterday no longer exists, though each stab of pain urges
the better days when friends had no answers; only hugs and
chowder and
grilled cheese.

There is no power but surrender left. And surrender may be the
most dangerous power that exists. All this brain can do with its
body of bones is fall back in the ocean, the lake, the meadow;
fall back to a time when, eternity past, all is reassigned. 

But God Knows

But God Knows

“But He knows the way that I take. When He has tried me, I will come out as gold.” Job 23:11

I hate losing things, especially something valuable or irreplaceable. I have carried a picture of my wife in my wallet for over 40 years. It is her senior picture. The edges are well-worn, but the beauty in that photo never fades. Several years ago we made a road trip from North Dakota to New York State to visit our son and daughter-in-law who were attending university at Binghamton. Within a day of arriving I could not find my wallet anywhere. I won’t go into details, but we scoured the car, our clothes and everywhere we could think, and found nothing.