carefully happy

she was carefully happy
in
her faith,
which had the ebb and flow
of a river,
always moving in
one direction,
a direction that she figured
to be heaven, a final home.

sometimes the water receded
and other times
it overflowed the banks,
but she stood by it most
of the time, her feet in it.
whether warm
or cold, she felt it move
under the current of
life, seeing the lightness of
sunlight on the surface,
but always
wondering about the darkness
that rushed below.

the unexplainable,
the tragedies
that appear in all our lives,
would take her breath away,
and she'd put her feet
to the fire
and ask all of those
unanswerable questions
about how God could allow
this happen.
What kind of God is this,
that permits
such things in our world.

but in the end,
exhausted by no answers,
she'd give up, and
back to the river she'd go.