Let This Be Enough
Pain doesn’t mean failure. Breaking isn’t the same as quitting.
I spent the Fourth of July weekend in Charleston.
We Are the Weight
Today is the Fourth of July. And my chest feels tight. Not because I don’t know what this day is supposed to mean, but because I remember.
And Charleston in July feels like a city holding its breath. It’s thick with heat and history, the kind that doesn’t rest.
If you’ve never been, the city reminds me of New Orleans, if New Orleans cleaned up for company and forgot how to grieve. Charleston doesn’t sing like that city does. It holds its breath.
And if you’ve never been to New Orleans, imagine any old Southern port city: oak trees older than the country itself, salt in the air, bricks baked red with centuries of sun. Heat you can feel in your teeth. Beautiful in the way old money is beautiful. Quiet. Built on someone else’s back. And proud in the way only a city that’s learned how to hide its ghosts can be.
But between the beauty, and between the churches and gift shops and waterfront mansions, you can feel it. The misery.
It lives between the cracks in the cobblestones. It lingers in the air where the City Market stands, where children were once sold, where families were pulled apart like crops. A misery the soil remembers, even if most people walking the ground don’t. Every brick whispers something. And most of it hurts.
This trip wasn’t some kind of pilgrimage. I’ve been feeling worn down, like a lot of us. It’s easy to believe that what we’re living through is the moment. The most dangerous. The most hopeless. The moment it all breaks.
Because it’s so easy to believe the pain is new.
That this is the worst it’s ever been.
And maybe it is.
But maybe it’s just our turn.
As I walked through the thick, relentless summer air, I remembered that every generation has had moments like this. Heavy, heart-crushing moments that feel like the whole world is fraying. Time has always been brutal. We just happen to be awake in it now.
And the question isn’t why now?
The question is what will we do with it?
I picked up a habit a few years ago: when I visit a new city, I find an old church or cathedral and step inside. Not to pray. Just to feel it.
So before I left Charleston, I slipped into the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist.
Midnight blue ceilings, painted with stars… like someone tried to hold the night still. The air changed when I stepped through the doors out of the heat. It always does in places like that. A woman was praying at the front. A group of tourists stood by the entrance while one of their own lit a candle.
I didn’t say anything.
I just stood there and let the silence say it for me.
And I thought about the words I needed.
I thought about the words I needed.
And I carried it out with me.
Not a religious prayer.
Just something for the ones carrying more than their share. Something for anyone who knows what it feels like to be alive in the breaking.
A Prayer for When It’s Too Much
god, or no one….
just let me get through this breath.
I am tired in ways I can’t name.
Tired past the bones.
Past the heart.
Past the part of me that still believes tomorrow gets better.
I want to stop caring.
I want to stop feeling all of it.
But something in me won’t let go.
So if you’re listening,
or if it’s just the silence,
here’s what I’m asking:
Hold the ones who are hurting beyond words.
Hold the mother who can’t protect her child.
Hold the man who lost everything and still gets up.
Hold the kids growing up too fast in a world that breaks too easy.
And hold me….
when the news is too much,
when the fight feels pointless,
when I feel like disappearing.
Remind me that pain is not proof of failure.
That weakness isn’t the end of worth.
That breaking is not the same as quitting.
Let the weight not crush us. Not yet.
Let it press us into something stronger.
Something more whole.
Let the hurt carve us deep enough to hold more love.
Let the fury teach us how to fight without losing ourselves.
Let the grief remind us what matters… and who we never want to become.
May we not mistake exhaustion for the end.
May we not call despair a destination.
May we rest, but not disappear.
Time didn’t choose us.
But here we are. Alive in it.
Stumbling through it.
Trying, failing, showing up again.
Let this be the start of something better.
Not grand. Not perfect.
Just honest.
Let us be the ones who remember.
The ones who stay soft without going numb.
The ones who walk through fire
and still find a way to build.
Give us one more breath.
One more try.
One more reason to believe that love still matters,
even here. Even now.
Amen,
or whatever word you whisper
when there’s nothing left
but hope you don’t yet believe.
