Five
Five
How Can I Go on Like This?
We say, then, to anyone who is under trial, give Him time to steep the soul in His eternal truth. Go into the open air, look up into the depths of the sky, or out upon the wideness of the sea, or on the strength of the hills that is His also; or, if bound in the body, go forth in the spirit; spirit is not bound. Give Him time and, as surely as dawn follows night, there will break upon the heart a sense of certainty that cannot be shaken.
—Amy Carmichael
In the dark, in the night, after two in the morning when the pain medication has worn off and sleep has fled, I have faced the stark reality of my life as it is, and asked myself, How can I go on like this?
How can I endure another sleepless night?
How can I go through another morning routine of just trying to get a pain-wracked, uncooperative body ready for the day?
How can I keep my commitments, lead by example, discharge my responsibilities at Joni and Friends, and hold onto my joy when this vise of pain keeps crushing me tighter and tighter?
Such questions will come, of course.
With David, I sometimes sigh, “How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my hear? How long will my enemy triumph over me?”1
It’s all right to ask the questions, and certainly God is neither put off nor offended by our anguished, middle-of-the-night queries. But there is also a time to set the questions aside and think again about answers—good, satisfying answers—He has already given to me through the years.
Answer No. 1: I can go on … because God moves through time with me.
On a hot, sultry July afternoon five years ago, Ken and I observed the thirty-eighth anniversary of a very similar afternoon in 1967 when I broke my neck. In fact, we invited a couple of friends up to our house to celebrate with a dinner of my mother’s famous crab cakes.
Celebrate, you say?
The dictionary defines the word as observing a day or commemorating an event with ceremonies or festivities. Honestly, I can’t think of a better word, given all the good things that have happened as a result of my wheelchair. This particular anniversary marked exactly thirty-eight years since that fateful day of my injury, and we commemorated it with … crabs.
And why not?
We all knew I’d be dead were it not for that feisty Chesapeake Bay blue crab that bit my sister in the water. When that little crustacean snapped at her toe, she whirled around and screamed to me, “Joni, watch out for crabs!” Kathy had no idea I had just dived off the raft. She didn’t know my head had struck a sandbar, cracking my neck—and that I was floating face down, holding my breath, and desperately hoping she’d see me, that she’d come and rescue me!
Thankfully, God got her attention with a crab, and when Kathy couldn’t see me, she became alarmed. That’s when she caught sight of my blonde hair floating on the water’s surface. “Joni!” she yelled. “Joni! Are you okay?!” Little did she know I was within seconds of drowning.
She swam to me in the nick of time. As Kathy hoisted me out of the water, I sputtered and gasped for oxygen. When I saw my arm slung over her shoulder—yet couldn’t feel it—I became nauseous. I knew something terrible had happened.
From that instant, life would never be the same.
And it was so long ago.
Later, after we finished dinner, we took a minute to close out the anniversary dinner with a short reading from John 5.
Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:2–6)
At that point we stopped. “Look at that,” I said, smiling. “Here it is, my thirty-eighth anniversary of quadriplegia, and it actually states that Jesus thought thirty-eight years of paralysis was a long time.”
What an anniversary present! The Lord of the universe who lives outside the confines of time, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, who existed before time began—this Jesus feels that living without the use of your legs for thirty-eight years is a long time.
“I’m glad for that,” I said, shaking my head, “because I sure think it’s a long time.”
There have been occasions, I will admit, when I wondered if God empathized—I mean really understood—how I felt, how I have groaned in my paralyzed body and hurt as each year brought more aches and pains. I have wondered because of verses like 1 Peter 5:10, which says, “And the God of all grace … after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” I like the part about being made strong, but the passage seems to imply that thirty-eight years of suffering is considered only “a little while.” In other words, the Bible makes it sound as if those years of anguish are but a blink of an eye. Doesn’t God know how interminable that much time can feel in a wheelchair? Isn’t He aware of how endless a sleepless night, shot through with searing pain, can seem? What kind of wristwatch is He wearing?!
In fact, He does know. He is aware. And for me, the sweet passage in the gospel of John lays the issue to rest. When Jesus saw the paralyzed man lying on the straw mat by the Pool of Bethesda, we can picture His eyes welling with tears. He saw more than a lonely, disabled man waiting—without any real hope—by the waters rumored to heal. We can imagine Jesus kneeling down to gently touch him. The Savior’s heart went out to that poor soul whose legs were withered and useless. It’s no mistake that Holy Writ says that God thinks thirty-eight years of paralysis is a long haul.
How could that be? First of all, Scripture reminds us that “He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust” (Ps. 103:14 NASB). But beyond the declaration of intimate knowledge regarding that fragile, earthly tent that houses our eternal soul, God went infinitely further to identify with our frailties. As a result, He who was ever beyond time decided before time to enter time, experiencing the passing hours and days and years with those He created. He didn’t have to, but He did. And I believe His Holy Spirit “experiences” life with us moment-by-moment, day by day, turn by turn, mile by mile. He is pleased when we obey Him (even though He already knew we would), and He is truly grieved when we disobey (even though He knew it from the foundation of the earth). He is undoubtedly with us, sharing our joys and sorrows, counting our tears, and whispering reminders of His presence.
“Have you forgotten,” some might reply, “just whom you’re talking about here? Jesus is the Ancient of Days who scattered the galaxies across the heavens and laid the very foundations of the earth. What would thirty-eight years be to Him? Less than a heartbeat!”
Yes, in the sense of Christ’s eternity, any amount of earthly time is less than a single tick of the clock. For that matter, the whole history of earth is like a day that has gone by, like a watch in the night (Ps. 90).
In our Lord’s humanity, however, thirty-eight years was more than His whole lifetime. He knows time in a personal, experiential way. As the writer of Hebrews said, “We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality.”2
The God who created time understands time in all its dimensions.
Even before Jesus walked the earth, when the prophet Jeremiah was placed into a lonely dungeon under the house of Jonathan the secretary, we’re told that he remained there “a long time” (Jer. 37:16). How long? A week? A month? Six months? A year? The Bible doesn’t say. But for the distraught prophet, the time in that hateful place must have seemed interminable. When King Zedekiah finally pulled him out for a consultation, the prophet begged, “Do not send me back to the house of Jonathan the secretary, or I will die there.”3
In John 14:9, just before He went to the cross, Jesus said to Philip, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
How long a time? Maybe three to three and a half years? Was that such a lengthy interval? Jesus thought so. It certainly was a long enough period of time for Philip and the other disciples to have understood this most basic, elemental fact about their Lord’s identity. In fact, the word Jesus uses here for “a long time” could be translated “a time as vast as this.”
When He and His disciples walked a hundred miles from Capernaum to Jerusalem, it was a long walk, and it took a long time. And when He was on the cross for six hours, they were six very, very long hours. Six minutes would have been long.
A fistful of years have passed since that crab-cake anniversary dinner. I’ve now crested more than forty years in my wheelchair, and my bones are thinner and more fragile than ever. In the Bible, the number forty usually means a time of testing. Like the forty days it rained on Noah’s ark, or Jesus’ being tested in the wilderness for forty days, or the Israelites’ wandering in the desert for forty years.
What does God think about four decades of paralysis? I got my answer not long ago when I read Joshua 24:7, where the Lord recounts for His children all the trials they endured after they left Egypt. He tenderly reminds them, “Then you lived in the desert for a long time.”
Keep adding the years, and God’s loving-kindness only increases in equal measure. Maybe that’s why Isaiah 43:18–19 says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!”
I don’t know if I’ll ever see a miraculous healing this side of my gravestone. But I do know that usually after forty years of testing, after the forty-year trial, there are always moments of victory, power, and jubilation. It’s been ages since a Maryland crab and a broken neck began the unfolding of God’s plan for me and for the ministry I lead to reach other disabled people with God’s loving–kindness. All I know is each ensuing year brings more people with disabilities into the fellowship of sharing in Christ’s sufferings. More people who desire to live to the glory of God. More people whose miracle is a heaven-sent smile, not in spite of the paralysis, but because of it.
I can’t begin to describe to you how important these biblical reassurances about time have been to me in my recent battles with nonstop pain. If I thought that I had a God who set aside the business of eternity from time to time to simply check in on me every few years, I don’t know how I’d survive.
When you find yourself in chronic agony, life gets reduced to hours rather than days—and sometimes minutes and seconds. When I am in physical distress in the night, unable to sleep, unable to move, and unwilling to awaken Ken (again) to turn me, I need to know that God’s concern and care for me is literally breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat, moment by moment.
With David, I acknowledge the Lord’s sharp attention to my physical and emotional needs.
I am bowed down and brought very low;
all day long I go about mourning.
My back is filled with searing pain;
there is no health in my body.
I am feeble and utterly crushed;
I groan in anguish of heart.
All my longings lie open before you, O Lord;
my sighing is not hidden from you.
(Ps. 38:6–9)
And also with David, I celebrate the Lord’s constant, attentive presence:
How precious are your thoughts about me, O God!
They cannot be numbered!
I can’t even count them;
they outnumber the grains of sand!
(Ps. 139:17–18 NLT)
There’s a word picture for you. Visualize all of the sand from every dune, every desert, and every beach in the whole world pouring in a golden torrent—on and on and on, heaping up higher and higher—into the clouds! Those are God’s thoughts toward each of His children—outnumbering the grains of sand. The flow of wise, loving, concerned, attentive, watchful, impassioned, infinitely caring thoughts surge on and on, all day, all night, for as long as you live, and forever beyond that. God has infinitely more thoughts about you than there are seconds in your day.
That’s a thought that keeps me going. That’s a truth that enables me to go on when it seems beyond my ability to do so. And here’s another.
Answer No. 2: I can go on … because I know God can use broken instruments to make incomparable music.
Jack Reimer, a syndicated columnist, wrote a story about the great violinist Yitzhak Perlman. Perlman had polio as a child and walks with crutches and braces on both legs. Instead of arranging to be seated on stage at the beginning of his performance, he chooses to walk across the stage methodically and slowly until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, bends down, picks up the violin, nods to the conductor, and proceeds to play. As Reimer describes it, there is a certain majesty in this ritual.
During a 1995 concert, a string on Perlman’s violin suddenly snapped, and everyone in the audience could hear it. The great virtuoso stopped and gazed at the broken string as those in attendance that night wondered what he would do. Perlman closed his eyes, and after a moment of reflection, signaled the conductor to begin again.
Though anyone who knows music understands that it’s impossible to play a symphonic work with just three stings, Perlman was undaunted. Apparently you could see this superb artist actually recomposing the piece in his head as he went along, inventing new fingering positions to coax never-before-heard sounds from his three-string violin.
The sophisticated New York audience watched and listened in awe, knowing they were witnessing a truly groundbreaking performance. When the piece was over, they exploded into appreciative applause. Mr. Perlman smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, and said in a soft, reverent tone, “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”
That’s another truth that enables me to keep going. Whatever strings are broken in our lives— if we concentrate, if we apply what we know—we can still play beautiful music with what we have left. In fact, it will be music that no one else can play in the same way.
This is a lesson I’ve learned in a wheelchair for so many years—and have had to relearn in these days (and nights) of unremitting pain. Sometimes you have to take what’s left and coax out of life something new and different. Life becomes a recomposition, a series of new chords.
If you’ll accept the analogy, severely disabled people aren’t your regular violins, and God doesn’t perform in our lives in the ordinary way.
People suffering from debilitating injuries, terminal illnesses, or chronic physical distress aren’t your standard musical instruments in the orchestra. We can’t do everything able-bodied people can do in their physical strength and mobility and vitality. It takes a special skill to bring music out of a broken instrument, and the one who does deserves recognition and glory.
God is that one.
God is the one who finds incomparable beauty and makes matchless music using the most unexpected and unlikely of instruments. He is the one who told Paul, struggling and agonizing over a nettlesome physical infirmity, “My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.”4
And in the same way, His melody—His incomparable, heavenly, impossibly beautiful music—somehow comes into its own when it emanates from a broken, battered, but fully yielded human vessel.
It’s music that can only come from particular instruments, broken in particular ways, and yielded with particular humility. I also believe it brings God glory in a way that is completely unique on earth or in the heavens. And that’s a thought that keeps me going, too.
Music played in the dark may have more spiritual power than music performed in the safe and pleasing light of a daylight concert or a well-lighted concert hall.
A few years ago I remember sitting on the stage at a large pastors’ conference in the Philippines. I was so excited to be in such an exotic place, especially during the monsoon season. And sure enough, outside a heavy monsoon rain was falling while the crowd, inside the large hall, was being entertained by a small band of Filipino musicians. Their music was intricate and lively, and the audience was enthralled with their performance.
Suddenly a loud crash of thunder shook the hall, and in the next instant, the entire conference hall was plunged into darkness. The powerful storm had caused the lights to go out. But nobody had bothered to explain that to the blind musical troupe! Unfazed in the pitch-blackness of the hall, the musicians played on without skipping a beat.
When their song was over, the audience burst into thunderous applause. The darkness gave us all a unique and amazing appreciation for the extraordinary talent God had given these blind musicians. But what really turned up the wattage on the praise that night was the fact that these artists played through the dark.
The same is true when we live for God. Sure, our lives resound with praise when He lights our path and we follow Him. After all, a disciple should follow his master. But when there’s no light for your path and you follow Him through dark times, the volume and the intensity of praise to God goes up many more decibels.
An unknown psalmist named Ethan the Ezrahite, in a time of apparent national darkness, wrote these words: “Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, O LORD … for you are their glory and strength.”5
In other words, when there is no light by which to read the music, those who know their God by heart play on.
And the music changes the darkness itself, creating within it a habitation of praise.
Answer No. 3: I can go on … because Jesus is my consolation.
I was feeling pretty down last Sunday afternoon because I’d had to stay in bed and missed church. Pain does that to me every once in awhile, but this time, it made me feel low. Very low.
I was lying on my side with my laptop next to me. Knowing that I could control my computer with voice commands, I opened my Bible software program to look up a few Scriptures.
Up came one of those pop-up pages—a reading from one of Charles Spurgeon’s devotionals. I usually click those devotions closed and move on to my Bible study. But this one was on the consoling work of the Holy Spirit. In need of encouragement as I was, I sensed the Spirit whispering, Go ahead, read about Me! So that’s what I did … and I’m so happy I made that choice. It was all about the work of God’s Spirit, described as only Spurgeon can.
He said, “Jesus cheers us.”
Those three little words caught my eye. He cheers us not by His physical presence, but through the Holy Spirit. Yes, the Spirit’s role is to convict and convince us of sin, to illuminate and instruct our hearts. But His main work is to make glad our tired hearts, to uplift and confirm the weak, to encourage and raise up the downcast, and to comfort us. And He does this all through Christ.
Yes, the Holy Spirit consoles, but Jesus is the consolation. The Holy Spirit may act as a physician, but Christ is the medicine. The Spirit heals, but He does so by applying the balm of Gilead: the Lord Jesus. One might be the Comforter, but the other is true comfort. The Spirit focuses not on His own things, but the things of Christ. Spurgeon reminded me that with such rich provision, why should I be sad or despondent? The Holy Spirit is graciously engaged to be my Comforter. He comes alongside me to show me Christ as I might not see Him when times are happy or when life’s smooth and easy.
And surely the Holy Spirit takes His sacred trust seriously. It’s the Spirit’s greatest joy and pleasure—it’s His specific command—to honor Christ by helping you and me. Would the Holy Spirit neglect or ignore the Father’s command to encourage us? I don’t think so! It’s the Spirit’s task to strengthen you, and He’s one who would never neglect His loving office. He lives within your heart to make your heart sturdy and glad, and to remind you of sure and certain promises.
And the beautiful promises that made my heart strong on that Sunday afternoon was Isaiah 61, where it is said of Jesus, “He has come to bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted and to comfort all who mourn … to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”6
By the time the afternoon drifted into the evening, I was, well, a different person. I was still in pain and still in bed, but I was at peace.
The question with which I’ve entitled this chapter, “How can I go on like this?” falls directly into the Holy Spirit’s mission in your life, and He takes it very seriously. He’s already on the job. He’s engaged. And if you listen, He will speak the comforting words of Jesus into the deep places of your soul.
Answer No. 4: I can go on … because right now counts forever.
I remember when this thought hit me with the greatest force. It was years ago when Ken and I made one of our last visits to my mother, when she still lived on the farm in Maryland. I remember being almost shocked by her appearance. At eighty-seven, she seemed to me but a shadow—a frail, thin shadow—of the strong, athletic woman I remember growing up. I had known she was losing ground, both physically and mentally, but on that trip it hit me with a finality that really took me aback.
She was nervous in our family gatherings and couldn’t remember the words of well-loved songs and favorite hymns. I remember watching her trying to talk to my aunt, and when she couldn’t find the words, she seemed so bewildered, almost lost.
She is now on the other side with Jesus and my dad, enjoying the wonder of a new, forever-young body and praising God with effortless, endless expressions of joy. But during those days in Maryland on that last visit, her frailty hit me broadside with the awesome fact of my own mortality. I looked at her and it was like the thought had dawned on me for the first time: That’s where I’m heading … where we’re all heading.
That sobering thought alone was enough to remind me of the stakes involved in life. To be confronted with suffering, whether observing it in another or struggling against it with your own aches and pains … to be confronted with affliction is a reminder that something immense and cosmic is at stake: a heaven to be reached, a hell to be avoided, and a life on earth to be lived seriously and circumspectly.
Our souls are the battleground on which massive spiritual battles are right now—right this minute—being waged. And the stakes are enormous. Beyond our conception.
Here on earth, we’re being observed by both the sons and daughters of God (who need an example of how to face suffering) and by those who have not yet bowed their knee to the Lordship of Jesus (who need to see how believers respond to the multifaceted circumstances of life). And beyond these earthly eyes, there are other eyes in the spirit realm—both angelic and demonic—who observe and take note whether or not we trust our God in the crucible of trials and affliction. (Remember Job?) And those who have gone on before us—are they watching too? Some interpret Hebrews 12:1 to mean that there literally are saints seated in heavenly grandstands, observing our battles and cheering us on to triumphs of faith.
There is yet another reason why right now counts for eternity.
The New Testament brims over with the promise of everlasting rewards for those who remain faithful to their calling, even in the face of great suffering. To the suffering believers in Smyrna, Jesus said: “Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer.… Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:10).
Every day of our short lives—even every hour—has eternal consequences for good or ill. Eternity—and the way we’ll live in it—is somehow being shaped by our moment-by-moment responses to the life we have before us to live right now.
And so it is only fitting that God should give us some sense of the stakes involved. I’m so grateful that life for us is not an easy road. If it were, if the Lord did not occasionally give us a taste of hell’s splashover, you and I would soon forget that this world is not our home. I’m also grateful that He opens our eyes from time to time to the magnitude of this spiritual war we are in. He does this by giving us wonderful foretastes of glory divine in the joys we experience, and He does it by allowing us foretastes of hell in our suffering.
Whatever we are experiencing today, we can be reminded of the eternal stakes involved.
That, too, keeps me going.
It’s not easy “going on” right now in my life—but I must go on and I will go on, until He calls me home. And for however many more days He gives me to live for Him on this side of heaven, every one of them counts forever.
Three Turns of the Ramp
Five different friends, on five different mornings, drive me from home to work. It means four stoplights, a sharp turn onto the 101, exit, then another three lights, and a right-hand turn onto Agoura Road. There’s one more light before you turn onto Ladyface Court, which winds up the hill to the International Disability Center—but I don’t count that one, because there’s enough room to brake long and slow up to the light.
I know every bend, every intersection of the route. I know it because each stop and turn causes a sharp jag in my back. It’s why on the freeway I always ask the girls, “Could we please get out of the slow lane? The trucks have sure made it bumpy.”
I may not love the drive to work, but I do love arriving.
Our receptionist recently called it “a little bit of heaven.” And so it is. The center stands tall and large, reminding me of the vision that brings me here every day: to communicate the gospel and to equip Christ-honoring churches worldwide to evangelize and disciple people affected by disability.
Just this morning as Sandy was driving me up Ladyface, I said with a sigh and a smile, “How many people get to do something each day that literally changes lives for eternity?!”
“We do,” she said with a smile into the rearview mirror.
I hit the handicap access plate by the center’s front doors, which slowly swing open, and in I wheel—heading not for the elevator, but the ramp.
I always take the ramp.
Centered in the middle of the lobby, it’s a slow, winding climb around the chapel to my second-floor office. And the chapel is, of course, the first place I want to visit. Yes, my secretary’s waiting. Yes, there are piles on my desk demanding attention. Yes, I have an interview at 10:30 a.m. But I can’t clear my head of those jags in my back until I spend a moment with God. It’s a moment that always includes a word of thanks that I’m here … and a prayer for healing from the pain.
I proceed to the second floor, where on each of the three landings, a Bible verse has been inscribed in large flowing script on walls of soft lavender.
Three turns in the ramp. Three landings. Three verses.
The first one reminds me of my purpose—why I get out of bed, go through an elaborate morning routine to get ready for the day, and endure fresh visitations of pain on my commute to the center. It’s why we’re all here at Joni and Friends—to go out, find the disabled, and bring them in.
But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. (Luke 14:13–14)
Around the next turn in the ramp, at the second landing, the second wall speaks to me of God’s provision for the task He has placed before me—and reminds me that His special favor rests on those who are weak.
“My gracious favor is all you need. My power works best in your weakness!” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may work through me. (2 Cor. 12:9 NLT)
And the last verse at the last turn assures me that my Lord will soon come again, gathering His scattered family and mending what has been long broken.
And when He comes, He will open the eyes of the blind and unstop the ears of the deaf. The lame will leap like a deer, and those who cannot speak will shout and sing! (Isa. 35:5–6 NLT)
That’s the verse, right there on the third landing, that always brings tears. Because my time in the chapel didn’t dissipate the spear thrusts in my hip and lower back. It’s still there as I write these words—and yes, it’s getting worse. Today may be yet another day when I work from the little bed in my office rather than from my wheelchair.
Did God hear my cry for help and healing in the chapel today? I’m sure He did. But for reasons He knows best, the throbbing persists.
How long will this pattern continue? How many more days of pain piercing me at every stoplight on my commute, following me around three slow turns up the ramp to my office? Of course I can’t know that. But those verses on three successive walls, at three successive landings, painted there long before this current season of elevated physical stress, continue to speak to me, continue to illuminate the path ahead, and continue to help me keep on keeping on, for yet one more day.
First landing: “Give a banquet … invite the poor … you will be blessed.”
In other words, My daughter, keep on going in My name to the broken, discouraged, and despairing. Keep on being My hands and feet and eyes and ears for those who are without. Do this as long as you are able.
Second turn: “My gracious favor is all you need. My power works best in your weakness!”
My daughter, I have not forgotten your need. I have not overlooked your hurt, disregarded your pain, closed My ears to your cry for help, or in any way withheld My favor from you. I will provide for you, and I will continue to show My might through your weakest moments, honoring your faintest attempts to honor and serve Me.
And the final turn: “And when He comes … the lame will leap like a deer!”
I come. Watch for Me! The help for which you pray—more help than you can conceive—is just around the corner. Just over the horizon. Can you see? The clouds are already beginning to part. I am coming with gifts of health and strength and joy and life like an artesian fountain. I am making all things new.
Three turns in the ramp, three landings, three reminders from the Word that is forever fresh and new. What’s life all about for me in these days of sometimes blinding pain?
Mission, provision, and hope. A task that still needs doing, a promise that still holds true, and a hope that keeps me glancing toward the horizon.
For now, for today, it is enough.