The Test

This poem reflects on the role that challenge can play in revealing truth.

Moments of hardship often expose the places where we have been relying on assumptions, comforts, or identities that cannot ultimately sustain us. While those experiences can feel like judgment, this poem suggests they are better understood as invitations to return to what has always been real.

Rather than condemning us, the test reveals the ground that is truly firm enough to stand on.

This poem came from recognizing that life's most difficult moments rarely create our foundations—they reveal them.

When everything is going well, almost any belief can seem sufficient. We can mistake comfort for stability or familiarity for truth simply because nothing has yet asked those things to bear much weight.

Eventually, though, something does.

That realization shifted how I thought about hardship. Instead of seeing every challenge as punishment or failure, I began wondering what it was uncovering. Not because suffering is inherently good, but because it often illuminates what was already there beneath the surface.

One of my favorite lines is:

“it is not judgement
at least not of you”

because it points toward an important distinction. The poem isn't suggesting that we ourselves are being rejected, only that what is false cannot endure indefinitely.

Looking back, I think the poem is less about the test itself than what remains after it has passed.

If truth can survive being questioned, perhaps it becomes something we no longer need to defend.

We can simply stand upon it.