“. . . but right now, the inertia of my life is leading me down this path . . .”

And then . . . there are times, when we reside in the place between the desert and the oasis. . . a ‘no-place’ of interminable stasis.  A vast, featureless landscape where, while the air is no longer acrid and laden with sulfur, is not yet full of the cool, refreshing, life-giving well water we seek.  It is a barren landscape of gray, dread and unseen, a foreboding neutral, time eclipsing all anger and agitation, a speedy standstill where naught is oscillating but pale motion,  space in nothing, like living in  a line devoid of depth, peace in nothing, rest in nothing, a soul shaped song bereft of voice, as a veil obscures a dimensionless world . . .

And thus, on we walk, seeming endlessly, as we wait to arrive at the oasis.

It is called many things . . . The Waiting Place, Stuck, No-Man’s Land, and a thousand others.  It is a place and a time of neither blackness nor light, of agonizing pain nor of brilliant light and ‘aha’ moments.  It is a grayness of life and numbness that bleeds colorless stupor where our faith, our patience, our tranquility and our resolve are tested to endurance’s last shredded thread.  The single encounter among this vacant landscape, horizon to horizon, is a solitary pillar of our own psyche, mirrored with every facet of our own fear, frustration, pain, anger, anxiety, and self-doubt crystallized since our birth.  It is feeling my daughters’ pain as they struggle to adapt to my life choices made as I struggled out of the darkness.  It is the husband walking along his wife through anxiety and pain, unable to fix, heal, or make things better . . . it is the wife feeling overwhelmed, powerless to make what is troubling her better, driven to find a solution, but realizing none . . . for now.