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I apologize for this being a day late. My internet went down.

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“Cry out for insight, and ask for understanding. Search for them as you would for silver; seek them like hidden treasures.” —PROVERBS 2:3-4 (NLT)

Reflect
We will never be able to make total sense of the pain and suffering we endure. But, somehow, we may find little bits of
hard-won wisdom in the midst. These precious gems do not erase the pain or justify its presence. People have had many
ways of describing these unlikely (unasked for) takeaways. Like Abraham Lincoln, who tried to make sense of the death
of his son and live with courage in the light of what he knew. This kind of wisdom was the “delicate fruit of a lifetime of pain,”26 his biographer noted. Sometimes we can only mine a couple of true things, and the rest of it is still garbage. We
get to choose if we sift through the garbage to find the gems. As Rabbi Steve Leder says, “If you’re going through hell, don’t come out empty handed.”27

26 Joshua Wolf Shenk. Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled his Greatness (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ,2005.) 192.

27 Steve Leder in “Don’t Come Out Empty Handed.,” April 4, 2023 in Happens, presented and produced by Kate Bowler, podcast, 53:03, https://katebowler.com/podcasts/dont-come-out-empty-handed/.

Respond
If you were to name a delicate fruit that you gleaned after a season of terrible, what would you say? What is the wisdom you have gained out of the terrible? Reminder: these “lessons” do not erase or justify what you went through. No need to play mathematician on this one.

Blessing for the life you didn’t choose

Blessed are you when the shock subsides,
when vaguely, you see a line appear
that divides before and after.
You didn’t draw it,
and can barely even make it out,
But here you are,
forced into a story you wouldn’t write.

Blessed are you in the tender place
of awe and dread,
wondering how to be whole
when dreams have disappeared
and part of you with them,
where mastery, control, determination,
bootstrapping, and grit
are consigned to the realm of Before
(where most of the world lives),
in the dream promising infinite choices,
unlimited progress, best life now.

Blessed are we in the After zone,
loudly shouting:
Is there anybody here?
We hear the echo, the shuffle of feet,
the murmur of others
asking the same question,
together in knowledge
that we are beyond what we know.
May you see a glimmer of possibility
in this new constraint,
that small truths will be given back to us.

We are held.
We are safe.
We are loved.
We are loved.
We are loved.28

28 Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie. “For the Life You Didn’t Choose” in The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days. (New York: Convergent Books, 2023). 188-189.

© KateBowler.com