Tears have been my food

I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart; I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation. As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from me and your faithfulness will ever preserve me. For evils have encompassed me beyond number; my iniquities have overtaken me and I cannot see; they are more than the hairs of my; my heart fails. Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me! Oh Lord, make haste to help me! Let those be put to shame and disappointed altogether who see to snatch away my life; let those be turned back and brought to dishonor who desire my hurt! Let those be appalled because of their shame, who say to me, "Aha, Aha!" As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God! ~ Psalm 40 exc., emphasis mine)

As brown and gray yields to red tree buds and grass green and crocuses yellow, tulips just ready to pop, my soul continues in the winter. I heard a bird song today, and smiled, just for the joy of that birdsong. This gives me hope of emergence from the numbness I've used again to protect the tender spots in my soul.

Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence,

Alone I had thought, yet soon a troop gathers around me,

Some walk by my side and some behind, 
and some embrace my arms or neck,

They the spirits of dear friends dead or alive, thicker they come, a

great crowd, and I in the middle,

Collecting, dispensing, singing, there I wander with them,

Plucking something for tokens, tossing toward whoever is near me,

Here, lilac, with a branch of pine,

Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,

And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pondside,

(O here I last saw Him that tenderly loves me, and returns again

never to separate from me...

~ These, I, Singing in Spring, Walt Whitman ~

One of the most difficult quandaries in this season of uncertainty is the fact that I am, after all, forever redeemed. Even Paul felt the pull of heaven and an end to the work of this world: Yes, we are of good courage, yet we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. (II Corinthians 5:8) In this battle for my life, I have felt that cloud of witnesses with me, sometimes, people I long to see who are in heaven already. I am polishing monuments of faith, as David says in Psalm 40, not hiding them away in the dark of my own heart, but singing them to the world.

My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me continually, "Where is your God?" These things I remember, as I pour out my soul; how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. ~Psalm 42:3-4