How many years have I waited for this moment? How many prayers have I whispered in the dark of midnight? How many tears have I shed, buckets of raging, bitter, and finally, surrendered tears? How many times did I beg and plead, as if a dagger had been plunged into my back, asking a merciful hand to please remove it? Until the years, the tears, the prayers, and pain became too much to carry. I laid it down like the dead child I carried in my arms for an eternity. I laid my burden down, and sang the song of goodbye-a song that no mother left behind wants to sing, and no lover left alone and barren has words for. There is no courage as costly as this. It cost me all to follow where my saviors were leading. It took everything from me, yet strangely, it gave me everything unseen, what I really needed and longed for. The pain traded with me, taking the sorrow and leaving me with nothing I could call mine. Still, it was a mercy because it left me its wisdom, what I most needed and had no idea how to get. Like a burned-out piece of wood I am; only a space remains that echoes of a life called mine. There must be space, or divinity has no room to dwell. I made room for divinity, that is all, and "I" didn't even do it, couldn't do it. It was done for me and to me: by the years, the tears, the prayers, and the pain. It softened the ground of my being and now the space inside is alive, fully alive with some kind of divine magic that is weaving a miracle. This is where I say thank you-for all the years, tears, prayers, and even the pain.
