Yes, pain has taught you a thousand times.
The strength of your weary soul
A wild rose
Rooting down deep
Until it’s soft tendrils
Stretch up through the asphalt.
It hurts to push like that
But it’s what you have always done.
Yes pain has taught you a thousand times.
Sometimes a passionate clawing at the dirt.
A fierce tenacity to plant new seeds.
Sometimes a soft whimpering;
The brute of an army
To lift your body up from your bed
A fragile step towards the door
To feel sunshine on your face
When you thought there would never be sun again.
Yes pain has taught you a thousand times.
Your heart like a Phoenix.
It’s very ashes
That achingly burned
Became the sustenance
That brought you life.
Whose very death
Is what allowed you to rise.
That kind of suffering taught you
That often the medicine
Is in the pain itself.
But now you are learning something new.
That joy, it can be your teacher too.
That sun that you chose to step into
When you didn’t know if you could believe again
Your soul is starting to recognize
It’s constance.
It’s rising every day.
It’s tenacity to paint beautiful
The dusk and the dawn
No matter what happens
On the ground beneath it.
Even when you can’t see that earthly star,
It is always, always there.
While you are looking at the haze
Of what you think are merciless clouds
All the while, it is shining out immeasurable mercy.
It swallows up even the darkest shadow
While you are unaware.
So when joy comes softly
In the kiss of a lover
Or the embrace of a friend
Hold on a little longer
Just like you have held on a little longer
So many times.
Let it teach you
When joy comes like a fury
In bread broken around a table with friends
Laughter like bullets
Piercing darkness
Let it teach you.
When joy comes in a whisper…
A kindness to yourself
As you look in the mirror
And you choose to see
The wrinkles
The weight
The fading
As beauty etched from the strength of your days
Instead of a burden to bear
Swallow that joy up like water.
Let it teach you.
When joy comes in a letting go
Of controlling the past by regretting
Or controlling the future by worrying
When you see something beautiful
In this very moment
And you hold onto it’s gaze
Longer than you did last time
Enough to be here now
When you recognize that presence is not what you thought it was
A moment that you can never hold on to
But the truest moment that will never end…
When that joy comes
Let it sift you
Let it change you
And let it teach you
Yes pain has taught you
A thousand times
Now let joy teach you
A thousand times more.