A brief, first-person poetic monologue reflecting on the coexistence of tenderness and suffering. The speaker examines holding pain tenderly, learning to trust despite helplessness, and concludes that faith and pain are companions that deepen love and lessen strife. The piece emphasizes acceptance, prayerful softening, and the value of loss and fear as paths to closeness.
Tenderly holding pain in my heart. Follow your soul, I say, what stops me this day? Is it my false wisdom mind that makes my open heart hard to find? The subtle contractions to get my own way, collisions inside and out every day? Gradually I learn the nature of flow and to realize most suffering need not go deep. Trust and helplessness can coexist in fact, otherwise something is missed. A prayer to soften with what I do not like does support the heart to become light. A yearning to love grows no matter the state. Finally the yearning has no reasons to wait. Faith and pain are true partners in life, Making it clear that they support less strife. To think we have arrived with only bliss seems to be surely amiss. Tenderly holding loss, failure or fear Being graced to be closer to all that is near.
