From Where My Help Comes

I lift my eyes toward the mountains

and ask,

From where does my help come?

Not from the mountain.

Not from the strength of my own hands.

Not from promises whispered by the world.

My help comes from the Lord,

the Maker of heaven and earth.

They have told me many times,

“You will be blessed.”

For the hands that cared for aging parents,

for responsibilities carried without complaint,

for the stones I turned

when someone needed a way through,

for the needs I noticed

before a word was ever spoken,

for giving without keeping count,

and loving without asking

what would return to me.

“You will be blessed,” they said.

And perhaps for years

I thought blessing would arrive

wearing the face of something I could hold.

But now I know

I am already blessed.

For blessing is not a life without storms.

It is finding peace

while the storm is still raging.

It is standing in the eye of the tempest

and discovering a stillness

the wind cannot steal.

It is the peace

that surpasses all understanding.

Life was never promised

to be a bed of roses.

Where there is birth,

there will one day be death.

Where there is health,

there may come sickness.

Where there is laughter,

tears will sometimes follow.

There is joy and sorrow,

arrival and departure,

holding and letting go,

mountaintops and valleys.

Perhaps this is the balance of being alive.

What matters is how we travel through it.

And I have learned

that the road becomes gentler

when Grace walks beside us.

So even when my path descends

into the valley of the shadow of death,

I will not surrender myself to fear.

For You are with me.

Your rod steadies me.

Your staff comforts me.

Those words are no longer

verses I merely know.

Life has carved them

into my heart.

I remember my father,

his hands lifting the chalice toward heaven,

and I remember the hands

with which I cared for those entrusted to me.

And somewhere between

the altar and the ordinary,

between service and sacrifice,

between prayers answered

and prayers still waiting,

I learned who my God is.

The God who saw

what no one applauded.

The God who counted

what I never counted.

The God who heard

the prayers I could not speak.

So I do not need to know

what waits around every corner.

I only need to know

Who walks around it with me.

When my strength is not enough,

His grace will be.

When the road disappears,

He will make a way.

And when I cannot see

the hands that are carrying me,

I will trust that heaven

has not lost sight of me.

Perhaps angels do not always come

with wings we can recognize.

Perhaps sometimes

they arrive as a hand at the right moment,

a door unexpectedly opened,

a voice saying, I am here,

or strength appearing

exactly when ours has run out.

So let the mountains rise.

Let the valleys deepen.

Let seasons come

and seasons go.

My peace was never rooted

in an easy life.

It is rooted in Him.

The Maker of heaven and earth.

The Keeper of my footsteps.

The Listener to my unspoken prayers.

And whatever tomorrow brings,

this much my heart knows:

I have walked through enough valleys

to know where my help comes from.

I have survived enough storms

to recognize the sound of grace.

And I have been carried too many times

to believe that I ever walked alone.

My help comes from the Lord.

Yesterday.

Today.

Through every valley yet to come.

In God, I trust.