Abide with Me

by Elizabeth Strout

He thought of Bonhoeffer writing that it was not love that sustained a marriage but the marriage that would sustain the love.

“Isn’t it a characteristic of a grown man, in contrast to an immature person, that his center of gravity is always where he actually is?”

Do not be afraid, for you are deeply loved by God. Be at peace; take heart and be strong.

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide . . . Odd to think that had been his favorite hymn for years, because what had he really known until this year about the sadness and pleading tone of that hymn? The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide. Tyler started the car, drove down the hill, past the church where he’d been married. When other helpers fail and comforts flee . . . O Lord, abide with me.

“My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.”

“As a matter of fact, I could argue that none of us has a center of gravity. That we’re tugged and pulled by competing forces every minute and we hold on as best we can.”

ANYONE WHO HAS EVER GRIEVED knows that grieving carries with it a tremendous wear and tear to the body itself, never mind the soul. Loss is an assault; a certain exhaustion, as strong as the pull of the moon on the tides, needs to be allowed for eventually.

“No one, to my knowledge, has figured out the secret to love. We love imperfectly, Tyler. We all do. Even Jesus wrestled with that. But I think—I think the ability to receive love is as important as the ability to give it. It’s one and the same, really. Consider, for example, the physical act of love between a man and his wife. If one holds back, withholds the ability to receive that pleasure, isn’t it a withholding of love?”

“I suspect the most we can hope for, and it’s no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love.”