There always used to be something to be done to improve a situation,
even when flying blind and pulling things out of a hat.
There used to be endless numbers of possible maneuvers to try.
It was possible to continue that effort indefinitely.
Indefinitely is over now.
Now is a narrowing of the field of possibilities
So stunning that it becomes clear
that a new field is opening up.
There’s just the problem of the awkward transition phase.
That’s where all the pain is.
When you are not the old worldly self anymore,
yet not living fully in faith in God’s providence.
The conflict plays out in the body.
The unseen warfare.
I wake up in a panic because the next tiny movement of my body will trigger the agonizing pain that I will have to fight with for the rest of the day.
All bets are off.
At first it seems like the old garden variety dread of continuing torture with no relief in sight.
But sometimes there is a small sliver of an opening there
that allows a subtle sense of something bigger
something that reveals…
and in that, I know that
the story of suffering that has captured me for the moment
is not the final story.
Prayer brings these small slivers of openings,
tears in the fabric of the old way of experiencing,
where divine grace is penetrating through.
It’s often just a subtle sense of a presence,
vague but so real,
greater or somehow more reliable,
a quality so constant even though just a flicker of a precious promise.
“I can not bear this” has no possible answer that the old self would be satisfied with.
It requires me to become new.
It asks me to allow this becoming new in prayer in every moment.
Of course it’s not me figuring out once again how to accomplish this, but in the humbling of prayer,
to let in the presence of the only Doer.
It’s only up to me to continually bring myself back to prayer
where I am true to that presence in my heart.
The terrible trial then also becomes the gift
of steering me right toward what I love most.
The terrible aspect is still intense but somehow changed.
Prayer becomes imperative,
my hand is forced,
and now I can do nothing but move toward the open arms of God,
to wake up again tomorrow in the promise of His great mercy.
May it Be Blessed: An Orthodox journal 