September 10, 2021

Echoes of a Grief Long SIlent

it’s interesting the things one can stumble over on Facebook

“What’s the name of your Grade Five teacher?”

“God gave us our first baby and she’s adorable!”

“I was defined by my ministry and now it’s over.”

that last one hit me hard today, twenty years gone by

fleeting remembrances of His work I once lived to do

His work I would have given my right arm that January

that bitterly cold January, to keep doing if He’d let me

but He didn’t, that door was closed, locked and barred

and all my frantic grasping couldn’t make what was, be

it left a hole, a huge and terrifying hole I couldn’t fill

for most of my life I’d been a teacher … now I wasn’t

I was at the end of the road of the man I thought I was

had no sign to show how to be the man I should become

it was frightening, debilitating, a temptation into futility

even now, decades down the road, I wonder “Why me?”

“What did I do or leave undone, that God ended me?”

even more, “I took care, why do the careless remain?”

it was hard, it is hard, to stand aside as careless others

do what I would not do, teach what I would not teach

hard to hear my voice grow silent as others’ grew louder

hard to come to grips with my sudden unimportance

it would have been my end did not God already hold me

it was not until many years later that I could understand

I had not come to an end, I remain the man God made me

He has placed me in a narrower and more intimate field