Читать книгу Recital of Love - Keren Dibbens-Wyatt - Страница 13

Triumph

TRIUMPH IS NOT THE WINNING AGAINST BUT the winning through. It is the making it to the other side, jumping off the rope swing and looking back, breathless and ruddy-cheeked in glee. It is the deep sigh that says, “It did not stop me!” We can triumph broken, not bitter; crushed, not dismembered. Triumph bears the standard of love held high, looked up to; the light shines from our banners and glints off the weapons we used in brightness, the glare alone enough to send enemies scurrying.

For understand this: there is no victory without me. Without me all is empty shell, open casket, pale and cold. Victory with me is given with shouts of joy and no bloodletting. It is worked with cries and trumpet calls, but also patient sitting and dull waiting. Glory looks decidedly different close up.

Here in my heart, the very definitions of words are changing, coming face-to-face with their own inadequacy. For the spoils of war are given from my hand, not looted, and the lands passed on to those I deem worthy, my trust-friends and confidantes. The good earth is given as territories to those who will husband it with tender hearts and soiled hands.

I eschew the rich and the powerful who do not want to get their hands dirty or their hearts broken.

For my people are the broken in heart and the crushed in spirit, the low and the humble, who tend their own roots before pruning the branches of others, and their soft, brittle wondering warms my heart. These are my beloved dear ones, the lost and confused, the uncertain and the wounded. Dismiss them at your peril, for you send me away with them! If you want to find me, look here first, among the discarded and bereft, and do not speak to me of rewards and revival until you have lived a time in their love.

I take no prisoners, no tepid self-servers who will not give me their whole hearts. I am in the business of freedom and completion, redemption and blessing. Your boldness will not serve you here. Remember your knees and what they are for. When you can bend, you will rise my children. Remember your neck and what it is for; when its stiffness can bow, then your heads will be lifted lovingly. This is my way, dusty and true. Walk in it.

Selah