when there is no answer

The truth is …..

trouble follows you wherever you go.

The Avett Brothers have a song entitled “The Weight of Lies” and a couple lines in that song had me thinking on our recent flight to Texas.

The weight of lies will bring you down
And follow you to every town cause
Nothing happens here that doesn’t happen there
….
Lies don’t need an aeroplane to chase you down

Sometimes I fall into the trap of thinking that a new setting will be the answer.

But I forget.

There is no answer.

Here, on this green patch of earthly sorrow and glory,

there is no answer.

No answer that satisfies or solves.

No answer.

I won’t find the peace I need in Texas or in a new job or in a new pair of boots or at the seashore or in a new house.

There is no solution.

And there is no fix to earthly sorrow except that of a Holy name.

And when I say there is no answer and there is no solution, I am not leaving God out of the equation.

I am saying that – through my hands and my force of will – there is no answer I can contrive or organize or control.

There is no fix.

Some situations must simply be endured.

And for a heart such as mine, a heart that wants to fix and mend, fight and defend, this no solution is nearly breaking me.

I would love an escape option.

You know the kind I mean?

Like – the kids and I drive far away and we escape the storm we are bending under.

We find a worm hole, a time machine, a tropical island, an Aztec Tomb like Gob Bluth has, and we all jump in and find that

we. are. fixed.

That’s the sort of solution my heart wants.

But I feel pretty certain that is not the sort of solution our hearts will be finding.

A sweet friend stood in my kitchen yesterday and we talked about the promise of “perhaps today”.  And she spoke about sometimes going to sleep with the pillow over her head and praying that the perhaps today would occur during the night.

And waking up and being a little disappointed that, in fact, it had not.

I feel that exact same way.

I go to sleep with the pain in my heart that better won’t come while I’m on this earth and the hope that there is no sorrow that Heaven cannot cure and I wake up and find ….

The day is still here.

The problems are still here.

The solution is still to endure.

The answer still does not exist.

I have not been fixed by magic or by muscle or by might.