The Broken Point

Past the breaking point, there is the broken point, where all the striving gives way to an utter stall, an exhalation that echoes in the dark. Saturday night. 9:30. I've paid twenty dollars to be let back into my apartment (in my general distraction, I've left the keys at the office again.) I wither onto the sofa. Bethany vacuumed the livingroom before she left for chapter camp, a brief mercy. A thunderstorm is growling over Arlington, shaking the trees, plunking heavy drops against the windowpane. I want to cry from excess of exhaustion, the way a small child cries, not from any specific motive, but because there seems to be nothing left to do.

But I love the broken point. I do. It is precisely here, at the breach in the wall, that my God slips in to find me, where there is nothing to drown out his red-letter whispers. Oh, joy.