Dark Days

I am starting to feel as if trouble follows me around, hiding behind corners and peering out to see when will be my weakest moment. It has become a constant challenge – a test, if you will – to deal with the day to day elements of life. It is not so much my own pain that is worrisome, but the pain of those for whom I care. A good friend is losing a son; a colleague is battling cancer; a child is questioning her faith for the first time. The choices that I often see presented to those for whom I care seem to lack in positive solutions. Instead, I see choices that boil down to a briar patch versus a field of stone. Neither is a pleasure to walk when barefoot. How can you choose? More pressing for self is the question, “How do I guide/support/encourage those I love?” There are some from which you can detach and view the situation with clarity. To those I am sure that my answers seem cold and distant. I do not mean them to be. For others, it is impossible to remove the emotional element that ties us together. My support is clothed in a reflection of the pain that I see in their faces. I wish that it were not. When I was young, I was told that “God will never give you more than you can handle?” I do not believe this is true. If it were, then people would not lose faith. They would not get so lost in a moment that they commit suicide. Revenge would not be a motive for murder. I believe that we all walk in the light, but are only a few steps away from the dark. We are all only a heartbeat away from a situation where we will need to ask ourselves, “What will I choose?”