I have not written too much lately, absorbed by the time I’m living in, the vocation and ministry I’m pursuing, and the family and friends who deserve and have been getting a big chunk of my time. Yet, when I look back on my writing from ten years ago, I find something in this poem that I might have missed before, something more that I might have learned.
Sometimes, our failures do bury us, whether they are failures with our relationships, failures in our careers, or failures of faith. I take hope from the lesson I had begun to understand in May of 2015, and how these last ten years have helped me see things I see as failures as mere steps up to have a better view of life.
I hope that perhaps this will resonate with you as it did with me. Oh, and as a bonus, some pictures of rainbows and sunsets from these years to remind us always to look up!
The Hole
Today I will choose,
Whether to linger here
With the smell of defeat,
In this dark hole of yet one more thing
That could have gone wrong and did,
Or I can press my fingernails into the
Moist soil and pull myself up
To daylight,
And a place of perspective.
The difficult,
Bad news heaped on
Bad news
Has poured under my feet
Until these steps have formed
To make it easier to step my way
Out,
To stand on the debris of failure
And grief,
Of sadness and disappointment,
And see that with just a little pull from me,
Just a bit of effort
Will hoist me out of this hole.
And wait!
Hands are there at the ready,
Help is close,
Born in friendship,
Delivered in love.
So today, I reach up to those
Steadying hands,
And use the strength of my own
Soul to see these set backs
As steps,
To see defeat as detour,
Blocking the way and pointing me
In a more promising direction.
Today, I look back in that hole
Of sadness, disappointment, defeat,
Bad news step after bad news step,
And I see that it built the path where I now walk,
All of those things lifted my eyes to see the
Beauty and magnificence of a day
Born out of struggle,
And set free in time for
Sunrise.
Today is the birthday of
Hope,
And even if some crushing blow
Heads my way,
I know that I can stand on that
Very blow and let it point me toward
The path, the new creation,
The next ray of promise,
Tomorrow.
-- Amy Vaughan May 29 2015
