time in despair

in Death Valley, there is a place where the rocks travel. Slowly, so slowly.  We can tell this only because the hot and dry desert shows the trails of the stones dragging themselves. It’s miraculous!

It makes me think of time. When I have been in despair, time moves like those rocks. When I am sad and overwhelmed past counting, the seconds move like those rocks.

“Okay. Is it done yet? Am I past the part where I am going to feel this way? Come one. Where is the part where I get to be possible again?”

That rock doesn’t intersect with our time. And in despair, my life and me don’t work together.

Here’s another way to show what I mean:

Psalm 22

14  I am poured out like water,

And all my bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax;
It is melted within me.

15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
And my tongue cleaves to my jaws;
And You lay me in the dust of death.

I wrote about this, when my baby was very new.

Perhaps those moments, which I recently named apocalyptic-adjacent events, deserve a different name. Overwhelmed is not right.

Outwhelmed? when all the ‘stuff’ ebbs away and you are left high and dry with nothing to hold onto or hold you up?

Time ticks differently in those moments.