For what it’s worth, I know how much you are suffering, for I know my own. My peripheral nerves are dying and I have lost feeling in my toes. This causes pain in my body at night and I am having to take medication for it.

And I tell you this because my inner spiritual pain is ever-present. And from that pain I write to others with pain. I am not for contented cows grazing in worldly pastures. Oh, no. I am for the few that know desperation from the ground up.

Desperation is a good thing for a beginner on the spiritual path. In fact, it is a necessity. Thank God for it. Thank Him for the gift of solitary confinement in a prison of your own making. He has the key and has handed it to you. But you will not be told how to use it. At first you will brag about having been given it. You will shine it up and show it off, even though you are talking to deaf people.

You will try to sell it on ebay but find there are no takers. What? No one wants your key? How could they be so stupid? Now you fall into anger at having a key with little value except to yourself.

You start a blog and share your key with a handful of people as desperate as you yourself are. But you know there is only one key and you have it.

You also suspect you are the only One. What do you do with that truth? You with your suffering and your desperation? You with your pills and your dying nerves. You are a solitary in a companion-filled world. What happened to your easy happiness? What good is the key if you are lonely?

I do not have the answers. I am left with only the questions. I am out of gas and out of security. I am teetering on the brink holding the key.

I know that this is enough. My cup runneth over if only I could get it to my lips. Perhaps to do that, I need to let go of the key.

Vicki Woodyard