Beauty in difficulty

Out of difficulties grow miracles.
Jean de la Bruyere

(thistle / Julie Cook / 2016)

Throughout our lives we will each encounter thorns…
Moments and experiences that are laced with those more troubling struggles which are simply unavoidable.

These encounters will obviously be uncomfortable, earth shattering and more often than not,
unbearably painful…

Such encounters will range from mildly irritating and bothersome,
to excruciatingly sharp, piercing and even most torturous.

Yet within each of these uncomfortable and painful encounters…
resides a mystery…

A mystery of rare, unexplainable and even unimaginable beauty…
Moments of pain and sorrow,
suffering and agony…
which are actually honed by the miraculous…

For from these enigmatic encounters…
those irritatingly painful experiences caused by the thorns scattered within our lives,
emerges a hidden majesty and beauty.

It is the blacksmith who must anneal his metals…
making them stronger by the raging fires of the furnace…
following each pass into the furnace, the metal’s trial by fire, comes the process of tempering the steel..
The hammering and beating of the heated and softened metal into a strong composition ready to withstand the rigors of use….

Within these difficult encounters of suffering, heartache and frustration, resides the mystery of our beauty and of our strength…

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not driven to despair;
persecuted, but not forsaken;
struck down, but not destroyed;
2 Corinthians 4:8-9

Forged, annealed and refined

“Life’s a forge! Yes, and hammer and anvil, too! You’ll be roasted, smelted, and pounded, and you’ll scarce know what’s happening to you. But stand boldly to it! Metal’s worthless till it’s shaped and tempered!”
― Lloyd Alexander

“I will bring the one–third through the fire,
Will refine them as silver is refined,
And test them as gold is tested.
They will call on My name,
And I will answer them.
I will say, ‘This is My people’;
And each one will say, ‘The Lord is my God.”
Isaiah 48:10

Temperatures escalate unbearably as salty sweat drips from a weary brow.
A strained arm crashes forcibly downward as metal strikes metal.
Deafening sounds reverberate off surrounding walls.

The hammer hits again, over and over
as the bellows work furiously pumping life into smoldering embers
The hotter the heat the more impurities are expunged.

What makes a metal precious?
Is it easily forged?
Does it corrode?
Is it strong?
Does it conduct a current?
Does it possess a monetary value?
Does it hold a luster?

Is it not the heat?
The fire?
The hammering?
The beating?
The cooling?
The polishing?
Is it not the work,
the forging,
the tempering
which exposes the value?

The focused hand raises the hammer.
The soul lays bare on the anvil.
The continued strikes disperse the molecules.
As it is thrust, without regret, back into the fire.
Heated throughout until glowing red,
The hammer strikes again.
Suddenly without warning is the emersion
The cold water drawing back the stretched fibers

Over and over, again and again
in and out, heated and cooled. . .
Until what was once weak, dirty and unrecognizable,
is finally made strong.
The sheen now reflecting the image of the
satisfaction of the blacksmith.

(*****Thank you all for prayers yesterday for my son. We don’t know much more than we did before the procedure but that there is no surgery for now, just more meds. The thought is that there may be nerve damage, of which Prayer, most assuredly, will be what is imperative to the healing process—I am grateful for the continued prayer of healing)