When Love Burns So Much It Hurts – a Poem

It’s not often that I get the chance to write “poetry.” It’s even less often than that, that I share what I write with others besides a spiritual director or close friend.

This Fall, I had a rather unfortunate encounter which led me to a beautiful period of prayer. As I sat with the Lord I wrote this “poem.” It’s mostly free verse with a little bit of rhyme. As I start my retreat today, I share it here in the hopes that it too might speak to you in a similar way that it spoke it’s truth, love, and beauty to me.

When love burns so much it hurts.

The fires of love they burn within this vessel made of clay.

Baked hard and fast with flames of pain, heartbreak, doubt, sadness, hurt, and loss.

This vessel though hard and strong, tried and true feels weak, chipped, lost, abandoned, alone, broken.

The achilles heel, the pressure point, the vessel could not hold.

Stretched, stressed, politicized, berated, worm down by violent use.

This vessel seemed a simple shell, a lonely shell, of what it once had been.

And yet within deep down inside the vessel knew it well.

The loving hands which had taken it, molding it from clay.

It felt the potters hands of love, the tender, gentle hands.

It felt the softness of the hands, the tender touch of care.

It remembered the beauty He saw in it, the joy He had taken in its creation.

It remembered the look of the Fathers eyes, the piercing beauty of His love.

It remembered too the callous hands, scarred, bruised, and torn.

For the Fathers hands were broken too with pain, heartbreak, hurt and loss.

The Fathers hands…the potters hands were the same hands of love.

And in the midst of sadness, hurt, pain, doubt, and loss…

The little vessel remembered the love with which he had been created…

The love for which he had been created…

The hope for which he had been fashioned.

For the vessel was not broken, nor was he even chipped. He had been cast in the fire of the Potters love, so that he might emerge new, beautiful, and strong.

The Father’s love was the fire in that kiln. It was the fire, tried, and true.

The fire which burned so much it hurt, for it was making all things new.