PARADOXICAL

(Cry of torment)

I am in the middle of a storm. I’ve just seen the dying of light and I’m passing through a night dark and deep. I have been suckered deep into a tunnel of turmoil, twirling tight with trials and tribulations. I am going through a purifying fire. My soul is bereft of joy, my spirit has dried up. Gloom has robbed the spark off my face. I am crushed to the ground, humbled in every way. My bones are losing their strength to forge on, and my sinew is giving up. My eyes have dimmed, my lips are parched, my mind has turned fuzzy and my heart is full of lamentations.

I feel being purged and I see a need to atone. Yet the avalanche of sufferings won’t stop; another torment arrives with lightning speed even before I can get used to what I already have; another burden pins me down like a boulder even before I can find enough strength to carry on. The wind whips at me relentlessly like a red-hot iron rod without mercy.

Brimstones from hell pour upon me like a curse without letup. It seems like blessings and grace have been withdrawn and wrath and rage took their place. I am left with nothing to hold on to except that little thread of faith that threatens to break in the faintest wind. I am sitting by myself in a desolate field that is slowly turning into an island. I await the water to flood me until it gets neck-deep, and there’s not a single rescuer in sight.

I am in a shipwreck. I can’t find my captain among the ruins and so am left to fend for myself. Friends have deserted me to save their own skins. On a floundering ship, everyone is a foe, each one fights for his own survival, every man to himself. The once-gentle lapping of the waters has turned into a threatening wave, ready to engulf my spent body, taking it away from the shore and towards the fearsome depths, toward the whirlpool of uncertainty.

I am weak and hungry, naked and cold. And thirsty. And wet. I feel as though I were in a desert, without a drop to drink, with nary a morsel to eat, without a shawl to wrap around me. I am covered with gashes and sores, and some of my pains have numbed, knowing it’s impossible to find an oasis or the shore in the middle of a sea- and sandstorm. In no time the sharks would be coming and the snakes a-slithering.

It’s only me and my thread now. One either breaks or I’m finished. It’s just me and my fingers crossed now. One either gives up from bending or I’m done.

“Oh, I think I will give up, Lord. But You will catch me.”

2.27.99

posted by Resty Odon  # 8:57 PM