To feel keenly the poetry of a morning’s roses,
one has to just have escaped from the claws
of this vulture which we call sickness of body or heart.
~Adapted excerpt from Henri Frederic Amiel

In order to mend and bridge chasms of painful, isolating realities, I often douse the fires of what breaks my heart in cups of tea or tears that flow during quiet dawns or at night when the wee hours find me awake and alone.  After the sipping or crying comes to an end, a numbed stillness often develops.  When it does, I become aware in its clarity of the amazing nearness of God.  Jesus, whom I’ve been calling, is offering to guide me through portals to places where pools of mercy await.  Sometimes the healing waters lie deep within my own being where the Holy Spirit resides in His cloistered sanctuary.  At other times they are found in the beautiful colors of autumn, or in the glistening dew on greening grass and flowers in springtime, or in the gentle gestures of another’s compassion, or in softly spoken prayers proffered by kind and endearing voices.  Wherever the pool and whoever the beneficial bearer of blessing, one or both sustain me, if I yield, in the returning rhythm of fitness as the Lord’s grace works to render me wholly well.

I’ve discovered that tears have amazing restorative powers for frequently it is when my eyes are blurred with wetness from them that a sense of God’s presence is strongest.  For surely in the loss of His own son by the hands of creatures He breathed life into, He shed more tears than we’ll ever know.  We all endure difficult and sorrowful moments in our lives.  So excruciating is the pain on occasion that it nearly stifles our very breath, but one breath and one step at a time begins the journey out of the depths of despair.