The Play

The world has been fed an act, the play you have performed perhaps too well. To find that so much has been a farce cuts to the very core of my heart. It makes me question the integrity of much of what I thought of you. Maybe you aren't the one I've held near and dear. Maybe neither of you are. I feel unsure if I'll ever know with certainty what is true and what is illusion. Only God knows how badly I wish someone would tell me how it is that I should be feeling and reacting. I can't help but to feel foolish, to feel like I'm putting my feet wrong at every step. So often, lately, you chide me with the knowing tone of a mother, though it is becoming obvious to me that you know less of propriety than I once gave you credit for.

How does it come to this? And am I doomed to follow the trails blazed before me? If you were in my place, you most certainly would be wondering the same thing. You would question whether this was a reality also written in the stars for you, acted and re-enacted time and time again before your eyes, so familiar to your heart that it is almost expected behavior, comforting, the right thing. What we have have known, what we have seen, those are not the ways intended for us--the breaking for the purpose of breaking, the suffering we think will bring us closer to our Maker because pain must be the pathway to true joy.

Dear one, I love you with a love that was implanted in my very soul before my bones were knitted together, my instinct to protect you from harm is as strong as if you were my child--but my love alone can't keep you from setting foot in the traps you are placing for yourself, my words not enough to change your course. And now my heart is in turmoil because it is becoming clearer to me, day by day, that I will be made to choose between loving you enough to let you go and loving you too much for your own good.

I found myself, the other day, thinking happily about the day when all would be put right, order restored. Happy comes with a price, now. I'm afraid that in order for happiness to find you on this earth, you must first be broken in two pieces, or perhaps more. It scares me to consider that returning to joy may not mean that the pieces will come together the way I hope they will. This loss of control is almost too much--I do not want to know what comes next or how far you will fall before you can climb upward once again. I want you to return to the quiet hills where we spent our happiest, carefree hours. What I wouldn't give to once again climb the trees and laugh with you when I don't know how to climb back down!

It has been said that God works in mysterious ways--and while I know in my bones that He is not working in the way you believe He is, I know there is a rhyme and a reason for all of this. The trick is learning to accept the part He has written.