Honing

When I answered the phone this afternoon, the feminine voice on the other end was one I hadn’t heard in a decade.  She sounded the same. 

She wasn’t the same.  I found her different, perhaps deeper. She was attending school to receive training for a new career that would prepare her to work with dementia patients and their caregivers.

The years had filed and sanded her, smoothed the treads on her tires.  She told me of chronic migraines and an uncertain future with a separated husband.  I heard the sorrow, the loneliness in her voice.  I also heard the resolve, the strength of will to prevail and make a difference. 

After the conversation, I reread yesterday's email from another friend of about the same age (both women being 20 years younger than me) whose anecdote for debilitating blindness is aggressive, pro-active involvement. “I know that the things that feed my soul are things I become invested in,” she told me.  “I force myself to keep up the things I know can yield joy, just in case. That creates a momentum of sorts.”

Pain levels the ground as life’s common denominator.  And yet it has the potential to hone and sharpen us, to become the whetstone shaping unique growth and transformation out of common humanity.

“The person who truly wishes to be healed is he who does not refuse treatment. This treatment consists of the pain and distress brought on by various misfortunes. He who refuses them does not realize what they accomplish in this world or what he will gain from them when he departs this life.”

~ St. Maximus the Confessor (580-662)