she does not study.
she does not research.
she looks at the artifacts of a twenty-something year old
abandoned again, repelling love like bug spray,
no friends, with a want to be chosen,
and she decides that this will happen
again and again
for all eternity. 

she is not educated.
her schooling is stuck in second grade
when she was left to her own devices
and begging to be loved.
she remembers the swollen journal pages of
choked tears, lonely school-room lunches,
the faintness of a mom that doesn’t love her.

she decides that this will happen again.

but she does not know
what the Lord has already named her.

she calls it repetition;
He calls it refinement.

she calls it abandonment;
He calls it “I will never leave you.”

A note from the sender

This piece began in the language of assumption—the belief that pain predicts pattern. That what has happened will always happen again.
But the Gospel does not argue with pain on its terms. It interrupts it.