On Self & Life
Lord, there are things I carry that I have never found the courage to bring before You.
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Field notes from building, deciding and carrying the cost of clarity.
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The Brutal Reality of Entrepreneurship
Years of adversity taught me to stay calm. The risk is getting so used to it that I stop being bothered by what I should never accept.
Read itLord, there are things I carry that I have never found the courage to bring before You.
Not because I believe they are beyond Your mercy, but because I have lived with them for so long that I no longer know where the suffering ends and where I begin.
I have mistaken their attention for love, their words for promises, and their occasional kindness for something sacred.
I remained where I was not wanted, convincing myself that patience was devotion, when perhaps I was only afraid to accept that some people would never love me the way I loved them.
And Lord, I think something in me has changed.
There was a time when disappointment brought me to my knees. Now it barely interrupts my day. I have learned to receive bad news without trembling, to endure silence without questioning it, and to continue living as though nothing has happened.
I do not know whether to call this strength or whether I have simply grown too accustomed to sorrow to recognize what it has taken from me.
I no longer pray for a life without suffering. I have stopped asking why certain things happened, why certain people left, or why the love I gave so freely was so difficult for others to return.
These days, my prayers are smaller.
I ask that You do not allow the things I have endured to make me unkind. That the people who taught me what abandonment feels like do not also teach me to abandon others.
That after everything I have lost, I might still have the courage to be gentle with a world that has not always been gentle with me.
And if You ever wonder where to find me, Lord, do not search among those who speak confidently of healing, or those who have found beautiful explanations for everything they have endured.
Look for the ones who have stopped asking questions because they are afraid of how little the answers might change.
Look for those who have learned to carry their disappointments so quietly that even the people closest to them believe they are at peace.
You will find me there.
Not accusing You of my suffering. Not demanding that You restore everything I have lost.
Only trying to understand why a heart capable of giving so much could spend so much of its life learning what it means to go without.
And when this long winter finally passes, Lord, I ask for one thing.