On the Things We Cannot Quite Put Into Words

I have tried to write. I have stretched my fingers across the keys, cracking my knuckles several times only to lay my head down on my arm, watching the cursor blink blink blink.

The garden has been put to bed.
A child is starving on my instagram feed.
The dogs need appointments at the vet. 
A mother is searching for her daughters in Gaza.
I think I’ve finalized the Thanksgiving menu.
I cannot bring peace to every corner of my world. 
Tonight’s rice turned out perfectly. 
I cannot fix the broken things I hold. 

And so I try to write. I try to tell you, a fellow passenger on this ship, surely the storm will subside soon. And yet — I’m not sure it will. I don’t know how far we are from shore. Some say the world will end in fire, Robert Frost wrote. I’m watching some of it burn from the comfort of my bed, and I wonder what must I suffer that hasn’t passed my door frame yet. Some say in ice, and I’m in flannel sheets while winter turns the hinges of the door. Perhaps the world will end in comfort, in mindless scrolling, in detachment, disassociation, the unbearable lack of justice and mercy, brazen lust and immorality parading in the window displays and endless commercials, and while we’re waiting for the next episode of “Survivor” to air, God will squash evil like a mosquito under His fingertip and I hope I’m caught up in His grip before He swats it all away. 

There is school to be done.
The war rages on.
There is work to be done.
Someone is screaming in my timeline.
There are dishes to be done.
Someone is getting shot in the street.
There is laundry to be done.
Someone is begging for mercy on my screen.

I don’t know the way out or through or around or in, but I do know that to properly show up here, in my bedraggled, discouraged form is better than rotting away in creature comforts, under the latest duvet from whatever advertiser is selling something to me now. 

And so I make the bed. And I lie in it and cry. I do the work and I pray. I make chocolate chip cookies and roll out pasta dough and ask the Lord to keep me from using these things as a means of escape. Might they even become worship? All of my prayers rolled and pressed, raked and gathered, folded and hung to dry, filling my senses like incense in these winter winds.