There are people I am praying for. Daily. Sometimes several times a day. Yesterday as I sat watching chickens, I held one couple in my heart, and wished I could somehow diffuse their pain. I asked God if I could take some of it on, as I would if we were walking together along a dusty road with heavy bundles. There is no way I would let them struggle under a hundred pounds, while I carried a water bottle. In my imagination, I lifted some of their weight and balanced it on my shoulders. My friend exhaled, and shifted the lighter burden. But this was only in my head.

I think.

A few hours later I started to walk across the house and realized that there was a deep ache in my lower back. It happens when I am careless about bending, but I could not think of any crates of books, or bulky chairs I had wrestled. I showed up to help my daughter move into her new apartment two days ago but my protective kids did not let me lift anything heavier than a floor lamp. I was the chauffeur with the van.

Yet the pain was real, and I did the slow amble that always makes me look like my mother in her late seventies. Probably it was just a coincidence. 

Then again.

I played with the notion that my pain could actually diminish the suffering of my friends. Stranger things have happened. Rather than resisting the pain, I held it, listened to it, thanked it. 

And prayed again.