And you are.
Along with remembering you in prayer every time I think of you (my heart will be heavy on your behalf until I hear news of some sort of relief, and we both know that might be awhile if we’re honest), I offer this poem which I've loved and lingered upon for several years now. It somehow speaks to what you’re going through, if only in a roundabout way. I just found it as I was flipping through my journal which I have here at school for a totally unrelated reason. I don’t think it’s a coincidence....God’s so much bigger than happenstance. And he WILL deal with [insert offender's name here] heart and mind, I am sure of it. Even in [insert offender's name here again]'s altered, hateful state last night, he is not immune to God’s dealings. I believe this so firmly. If anything, he has stupidly put himself squarely in the center of the crosshairs of God’s holy rifle (okay, that’s funny). You say you’re not very good at being “religious,” well neither am I. I’m just a traveler who trusts someone other than myself to get me to the right place on the roads that are best for me. Our good and tender God is in the deepest parts of this struggle with you, I guarantee it.
The Journey
by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you kept shouting
their bad advice -- though the whole house
began to tremble and you felt the
old tug at your ankles.
“Mend my life!” each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop. You knew what you
had to do, though the wind pried with
its stiff fingers at the very foundations,
though their melancholy was terrible.
It was already late enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds.
And there was a new voice which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company as you strode
deeper and deeper into the world,
determined to do the only thing you could do,
determined to save
the only life you could save.
