Hello all,
I have always been what some people call book smart.
I know things.
Some useful.
Some not.
Some filed away in the crowded rooms of my mind for reasons even I do not fully understand.
I can remember fragments of history.
A line from a song.
The meaning behind a movement.
The reason something happened long before I was born, and why it still has its hand around the present.
For much of my life, knowledge has been a tool.
It gave shape to things that hurt.
It gave language to silence.
It gave me something to hold when the world felt too large and too indifferent.
But lately, I have been reminded of something humbling.
There are moments when knowledge is not enough.
I have another friend battling a terrible illness, and I find myself standing in that helpless place where the mind keeps reaching for answers and comes back with empty hands.
I know the power of prayer.
I believe in prayer.
I believe in the quiet force of it.
I believe there are rooms we cannot enter, battles we cannot fight directly, pain we cannot remove, and still our prayers can travel where our hands cannot.
But I would be lying if I said prayer has quieted all of me.
Because there is another part of me that wants to do more.
That part of me wants a list.
A plan.
A solution.
A way to fix what is breaking.
A way to step into the storm and make myself useful.
And that is where the ache begins.
I am used to figuring things out. I am used to turning problems over, studying the corners, looking for the door everyone else missed. I am used to believing that if I sit with something long enough, I can find a path.
But illness does not always offer a path.
Sometimes illness is a locked room.
Sometimes love stands outside of it with no key.
That is a hard thing for a person like me to admit.
Because when someone you care about is suffering, being still can feel like failure. Waiting can feel like abandonment. Saying “I am praying for you” can feel small, even when it is not.
And maybe that is the difficulty.
Not that prayer is weak.
But that love is restless.
Love wants hands.
Love wants legs.
Love wants to carry groceries, pay bills, sit in hospital rooms, answer phones, make soup, raise money, hold silence, and somehow bargain with the universe for more time.
Love does not like standing helpless.
And yet, so much of being human is learning how to stand in places where we cannot control the outcome.
That may be one of the hardest lessons of adulthood. Not responsibility. Not discipline. Not survival. But the knowledge that you can love someone deeply and still not be able to save them from what they are facing.
There is a particular kind of pain in that.
It strips away the illusion that intelligence is protection. It reminds you that all the books, all the facts, all the carefully stored knowledge in the world cannot always tell you what to do when someone you love is hurting.
And maybe that is why I have felt useless lately.
Not because I am useless.
But because the tools I usually trust do not seem large enough for the moment.
Still, I am trying to remember that usefulness does not always look like rescue.
Sometimes usefulness is presence.
Sometimes it is a phone call.
A message.
A prayer whispered when no one is watching.
A meal was dropped off without needing credit.
A donation.
A shared link.
A ride.
A quiet check-in that does not demand a response.
A willingness to keep showing up after the first wave of concern has passed.
Sometimes, usefulness is not solving the pain.
Sometimes it refuses to let someone feel alone inside it.
I am thinking about that now.
I am praying.
I am listening.
I am looking for what can be done.
Maybe that is where I begin.
Not with the grand gesture.
Not with the perfect answer.
Not with the fantasy that I can fix what illness has broken.
But with what I have.
My prayers.
My words.
My books.
My small platform.
My willingness to ask others to care with me.
Maybe that is nothing.
Maybe, in a world that often teaches us to look away from suffering because it makes us uncomfortable, choosing to stay near is already an act of love.
I do not yet know exactly what to do.
That is the honest truth.
But I know I do not want to do nothing.
So I will keep praying.
I will keep thinking.
I will keep looking for the things my hands can do.
And maybe that is what care becomes when we are out of answers.
A prayer first.
Then a step.
Then another.
Kyle J. Hayes
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