Below

Always just below the neutral point, that is my baseline.  BELOW.  Being dragged all the way down and under by all the big and small and mundane ordinary life moments.  Always returning to JUST BELOW.  Building resilience, but never enough to get all the way to the JOY of living.  

I know I want it. Yet it is hard to trust it.  Without seeing anything that tells me something other than just SURVIVE.  This is it.  This is as good as it gets.  You don’t get anymore, just more of this.  Can you tolerate it? Can you stand it? And for what? FOR WHAT??? That is the question I always come back to.  For what all this struggle? All this pain? All this depth? For what?

I throw that out there.  For what GOD? Will you show me? Will you grow the faith in me? Will you give me glimpses so I can believe there is something more? 

This is my prayer.  That I may stay open, may remain hopeful, may always orient to the thing that is true, even if it is hard, even if the hard times are more than the good ones.  May I begin to find so many reasons why I want to live so much.  For me.