There is a Harlem Renaissance poem by Langston Hughes titled, "Mother to Son."  I have been thinking about the poem quite a bit lately for a variety of reasons.   The life experienced by the speaker of the poem, "ain't been no crystal stair."  At first glance the metaphor of the staircase as compared to life seems obvious.  However, the images that Hughes uses to set up this comparison, in combination with its relevance to The Civil Rights Movement, are what have given this poem its timeless relevance.

During what I believe was my senior year of college, our dorm lounge was the lucky recipient of a remodel.  For a number of weeks there was nothing but plywood and carpet tacking strips on the staircase that led from the lounge to my hallway.  Inevitably I would end up forgetting about the necessity to wear shoes and step on the painful tacking strips.  It was a pain that was easily forgotten, thus the reason that I completed the same action again and again with no change.  It was easy to keep moving up and down the stairs, both real and metaphorical during college because the pain only lasted a moment.

Then, I became an adult...not the in between in which are have the illusion of taking care of ourselves...but the stage when life truly becomes real.  It is different for everyone and some have the burden of moving to that stage far earlier than others, but I was lucky and I didn't really become an adult until I was married.  Sure I had attended college and had started my career before then, but I was still protected from the outside world in a variety of ways.  I was also fairly blessed during the first few years of marriage...other than the normal financial strains of trying to build a life with another person amid the lure of the destructive concept of credit and the loss of a job which praise God didn't last for very long, life was still fairly easy.

Then came the hard stuff...infertility...divorce...workplace interactions...anxiety...weight gain...loneliness.  In the middle of it all it felt impossible to keep climbing and I understand the compulsion to simply "set down on the steps 'cause you find its kinder hard."  There have been too many days over the past few years and since we started the adoption process that I wanted to stop climbing the staircase because it is hard and we are going to have to wait a long time.

But then I watched the people around me face things that make everything that I listed above seem like the pain that I felt when I stepped on the carpet tacking strips...temporary and insignificant.  In recent months I have watched loved ones fight through sickness, and lose that which is sacred, and experience other kinds of loss in ways that don't even come close to what I have faced.  During the Civil Rights Movement I am sure that the fight for equality seemed so far away, and in many parts of the world and some parts of the United States still seems far away...and the daily struggles too much to bear...and yet they have kept moving...

Christ didn't have to go to the cross for me.  He could have walked away and let me pay the price, but he didn't.  He kept walking...he faced the night essentially alone in the garden...all the way to the cross, and because of that I know that I can keep going too.  Not for a moment did He leave me there alone "goin' in the dark."

And someday...no matter how far away that day will be I want to be that mother who tells her son to keep going because, "life for me ain't been no crystal stair," but eternity will be and even when it is hard our Savior will never leave us.  He will provide the landings and He will help us to turn corners.  Not for a moment will He leave us alone...and I will never sit down and I will never stop. 


And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair