THE WALL

Their wedding picture mocked them from the table,
these two
whose minds no longer talked
to each other.

They lived with such a heavy barricade between them
that neither battering ram of words
nor artilleries of touch
could break it down.

Somewhere, between
the oldest child's first tooth and
the youngest daughters graduation, they lost
each other.

Throughout the years, each slowly unraveled
that tangled ball of string
called self, and as they tugged at stubborn knots
each hid his searching from the other.

Sometimes she cried at night and begged the whispering darkness
to tell her who she was.
He lay beside her, snoring like a hibernating bear, unaware
of her winter.

Once, after they had made love, he wanted to tell her
how afraid he was of dying,
but fearing to show his naked soul,
he spoke instead of the sexiness of her body.

She took , a course in modern art, trying to find herself
in colors splashed on a canvas,
and complaining to other women about men
who were insensitive.

He climbed into a tomb called "the office"
wrapped his mind in
a shroud of paper figures and buried himself
in customers.

Slowly, the wall between them rose,
cemented by the mortar
of indifference.

One day, reaching out to touch each other,
they found a barrier
they could not penetrate, and recoiling
from the coldness
of the stone, each retreated from the stranger
on the other side.

For when love dies, it is not in a moment
of angry battle,
nor when fiery bodies lose their heat.

Love dies panting, exhausted, expiring at the bottom
of a wall
it could not scale.

Some of us at New Life Church have experienced this wall. We know how it feels. And yet we have also experienced this wall being dismantled. God has a way to take down the wall. Would you like help in bringing down your wall? See our Family Helps page with helpful links and resources.