Thrasher's Call

From Carly Marlys's "How are you?", which contains the lines:

How are you? I am well. I am wandering through the sharpness of the world. And I am softening in the darkness, molded by the ruin and the river. I am well. I am trying.

"Come, all who are weary and heavy-laden", He told me, "and
I will give you rest;" so I came, and I,
in easy and enlivened hours, was glad. But I am
beaten now and bent; this blow-softening
shield that I simply had not tested, had not tried in
battle seems so often now the
heavy weight in my tired hands. As darkness
of decay binds my eyes, a molded
rag of ashen loss that blinds by
infecting my sight until the
only shape I can trace is ruin,
and with struggle and pain and
stabs of grief my dust-born frame is scabbed — until the
slow baptism of the rising sun's light leads me back to the river.
Clean water streams, washes over me, and I
find, as I lose pounds of earth and ache, that I am
lighter, yes, but more rested, more well,
more whole. And there, as the headwaters of this stream, I
see Him, living and flowing, and telling me: "before your pain began, I Am,"
and I feel in my hands His love's shield again, and realize: this was its trying.