#spiritualreflection — Public Fediverse posts

Strike

The phobia of a copperhead strike
is made real by the lunge of a
lawnmower into the brush to shred
the coiling orange and brown with
a screaming whump only to realize
that it was an eastern box turtle
I had set upon.

Once again what I am afraid of 
has led me to destroy what I love 
and I weep, wondering if I will ever 
become one whose perceived fears 
are not acted on.

I did not look to see if the 
slowmover was dead
but I knew. I could see the 
bloody pieces of her
shell scattered across
the lawn.

September 3, 1996

When You’ve Lived Long Enough to Lose So Much:

A Gentle Word for Christians Carrying Grief

There is a kind of heartbreak that faith does not erase.
A kind of loneliness no sermon can soften.
A kind of grief you don’t understand until the years pile up
and the people you loved more than life slowly disappear from your world.

If you’re carrying that kind of grief, you are not faithless.
You are not doing anything wrong.
You are simply living long enough to know what loss really costs.

And as hard as it is to say this out loud —
Scripture never fully described this experience.
Not because Scripture is wrong,
but because the men who wrote it didn’t live long enough to know this pain the way you do.

You’ve lived longer than Jesus and Paul — and that means you’ve carried grief they never faced.

This isn’t irreverence.
This is reality — spoken gently and without contempt.

Jesus died young.
Paul died younger than many of us will.
Neither lived long enough to feel the weight of decades of loss:

• the slow thinning of a family
• the burying of a spouse
• the ache of losing the person whose voice shaped your mornings
• the long, hollow nights in an empty bed
• the sting of surviving when the one you love is no longer here to survive with you

Pastors often say Jesus “experienced everything we experience.”
But if He never lived to old age,
never married,
never held a dying spouse’s hand,
never woke up alone after 40 years of shared life —
then He didn’t experience the long grief of survival.

It doesn’t insult Him to admit that.
It simply names the truth with tenderness.

Paul likely buried friends, yes.
He knew persecution, heartbreak, and loss.
But he did not know this:
the quiet agony of outliving the love of your life.

Only the old know that pain.
Only the widowed.
Only the ones who keep going with half their heart missing.

“Death, where is thy sting?” You know exactly where it is.

The verse speaks of victory — and it’s beautiful.
But it does not touch the place where you are hurting right now.

The sting isn’t in death.
It’s in survival.

It’s in the empty chair.
The pillow untouched.
The quiet house that echoes her absence.
The anniversary that comes whether you want it to or not.
The mornings without her voice.
The nights without her warmth.
The life you must continue even though your heart begs you not to.

You live with a wound Jesus never bore
and Paul never wrote about:

the wound of survival.

And you feel it every day.

Survival is a calling no one prepares you for.

You didn’t ask for this.
You didn’t choose it.
But here you are — still breathing, still walking,
still loving the one you lost by carrying their memory forward.

And here is something true:

If you had not lived this long,
you would never have understood this depth of grief
or this depth of love.

Only those who survive long enough
learn the terrible, sacred weight of continuing alone.

You continue for her.
You continue with her memory.
But you continue without her.

And that is the sting.

Not lack of faith.
Not God abandoning you.
Just the human cost of loving someone so deeply
that losing them tears the world in half.

You are not weak. You are not faithless. You are grieving — and grieving is holy.

Jesus wept at Lazarus’ tomb.
He knew sorrow.
But He did not know this sorrow — this long, slow, solitary ache of living year after year without the one who made the world make sense.

Your grief is the price of love.
Your tears are prayers in their own right.
Your survival is its own kind of courage.

And even if Scripture doesn’t fully describe this particular wound,
God sees it.
God honors it.
And God holds you in it.

There is no shame in your sadness.
No weakness in your tears.
No failure in your continuing.

You loved deeply.
You lost painfully.
You grieve honestly.

And you are still here — carrying love forward one day at a time.

Dedication:
In loving memory of my wife, Luz — posted at the exact minute of her passing, one year later. This essay is for everyone who has loved deeply, lost painfully, and continues anyway.

Featured Image:
Featured image: Wedding Day of Cliff & Luz Potts — October 10, 2023.

Stumbling Block

It seems I have always been stumbling, tripping over the unintended in a fog of wandering wonder.

The mist has been ever around me, my cloud by day. I am enveloped by mystery.

You do indeed love to surprise me, O God;

two girls find shiny stones in a fountain and their joy chases away the despair at not finding a loved one,

the hospitality of friends lightens the weight upon a heavy chest from a returning to what was and the traveler can breathe again into what will be,

a mother’s words and the night breeze dries a daughter’s tears and she can smile at the deep thrum of a bullfrog,

lovers lie for a moment in the morning and the frustrations of yesterday fade into the quiet beginnings of another day.

It is time then.

I rise up into the bone crackling morning, my body protesting, my spirit already stretching out along the places I will see.

Inside, I find I am ready for more stumbling.

July 29, 2022

The Silver Strand

returning 
to the car 
i see
a silver strand 
intent on 
capturing me
 
i was gone 
but a moment 
yet the spider 
did spin
from the mirror 
across the window 
to lure 
me in
 
it seems 
this small one 
dreams of 
bigger prey
so too I 
if to my path 
I stay

this bit 
of web 
is a 
flimsy thing
but if 
I cast 
it not
i snare 
nothing

July 2, 2016

Broken Chair

I rescued the chair from outside someone’s apartment with the hope of fixing it and having it become a welcome member of our family.

But, as often happens, it sat around in various places waiting for me to find the time to repair it.

Finally, I decided it was one more project I did not have time for, and so yesterday I put it out on the sidewalk in the hopes that someone would take it home.

It sat out there all through yesterday in the rain and the sun, lonely, awaiting a new friend. A few people paused to look but then drove away. Periodically I would look out my window to see it still sitting forlornly there.

Then this morning I noticed an older gentleman walking past who began to inspect the chair. He picked it up, put it on his back and walked away.

It is a beautiful chair. It just needs to be repaired, and I am sure its new owner will do just that.

I don’t know about you, but I feel a lot like that broken chair, waiting for the gentle hands of someone to put me back together again.

I wait, broken, with the hope that those hands will touch me, I will be healed, and I can have a purpose again.

July 10, 2015