A letter of love to all over-strained, effort-bound hearts,

Let me weave of words a quiet place, the silent breath and an open gaze looking out on life from the place within, designed by God to see.

Where is the hook of the sharpened lie? Where is the string that binds you tight to the ancient scream of a soul that forgets we are all this small and God fills the spaces between? Nobody is all, you see.

And our gift can be our curse in life, if it binds instead of freeing.

The lies will die and the truth will glow ... it is from death that life must grow. Let the answer simply be.

We are each links of unbroken chain, so don't try to bear or wear the strain--for God is the substance and he is the weave--and we are the gaps where the light can be seen, not the strength that holds the world in place.

I so often fail to know the sound of the hidden voice when I'm shuttered and drawn ... in the busy world of that mindless place where I think too much and forget all grace. I try and try ... and then ... no more is done than would have been.

So often the good that will pour right through to the world is the rest that comes when I know I lost, in the breaking of my strength. Weak and alone. The light pours through the cracks where I held myself too true.

I widen the tears in my covering veil, for I am the bushel hiding the light. It's already there and I don't have to fight, but relax and release what was always given. There is plenty and more than I can reveal. The effort isn't the point.

How could we know it if we didn't feel the over-strain of our adequacy?

In weakness, then, is strength. And the path to knowing is sometimes the way of seeing the life of effort and pain and feeling the lack of that something more ... while knowing it's there in your very core. It isn't one step further, now. It's growing already and always must, for that is the pattern of things.

God has given you much, but is it yours if you cannot rest in confidence?

What child enjoys the gift she clutches to her chest in resistant fight that none should take what is her right? It is by letting go she finds the stillness, the space of rest and life. It comes and goes as she runs and plays; her motion does not bind or fight. Know the flow of living is always this way ... and we feel it is a mystery.

Pushing less will effect more, for we are the channel and not the source. Rest is trust and thanks and breath of life. One way or another,... we still find this is something we always knew. Hear this! It grows by season and time, and the sun is rising once again.

Observe. What is true?

.....

This was inspired by/for Samantha of Defeating the Dragons, after she spoke of the effort that seeks to bind her even as she overflows the gifts designed into her from the beginning.  I love her through her writing. You might, too.