An Analogy

I sit at my campfire.  Today, it burns low.  It's hard to keep it high enough to provide the warmth and light that it used to.  The warmth keeps the pain away. The light enables me to find more fuel for the fire.  Sometimes, I have enough wood to feed the fire well, and the fire burns so high that I'm nice and toasty warm - and there's light enough to forage quite a distance for wood.  Sometimes, the wood I find is excellent fuel, and it burns long, hot, and brightly.  It lasts a long time. Other times, I don't find much more than a little bit of bark - or all I find is wood that burns up immediately, and doesn't provide much in the way of heat and light. I never know which kind of wood it will be, because it all looks the same.  I have to put it on the fire to see if today will be a good day, with a warm bright fire, or if today will be a dim, cold, bad day with a small glowing coal where a fire should be.
Always, always there is pain.  Sometimes the pain is a small, insignificant thing, kept at bay by the heat and light.  Sometimes it's so overwhelming that simply breathing is all I can do. I just wish I could explain, sometimes, how very exhausting it is.  None of this shows, after all.  None of it is visible.  It's all internal, this pain.  But it still wears me down just like visible, physical pain does.  It's still exhausting.
It used to be easier to keep my fire going brightly, because it used to be "our" fire.  When it was "our" fire, one of us could tend the fire while the other looked for fuel, or both could gather wood for a time, and double our chances of finding good wood - or at least bring back larger quantities of any wood we found.  And, if one of us was unable to go look for wood one day, the other could look. Now,  I have to limit myself to what I can bring back by myself, rather than what "we" could carry between us, and if any is going to be found, it has to be by me.  There's no one else to get any, because each campfire must be maintained by those responsible for it.  Just as each fire is created by what each person brings to it, each fire is maintained by those same people.  So if I'm exhausted and can't move, the fire gets no fuel.

Campfires surround me, providing additional heat and light.  These are the fires of my family and friends, helping to keep the pain - and the darkness - at a distance. Sometimes, they visit my campfire, and help me build it up.  Sometimes, they bring additional wood for my fire.  Sometimes, I visit their fires, and bask in the warmth of their fire and friendship before heading back to my fire - occasionally laden with wood for my fire.  And the family and friends help.  Just the knowledge that they are there helps, and the additional heat helps keep the pain farther away.  Without these campfires, I don't know how I would have made it this far.  God provides what we need, every day.  And I am surrounded by the loving care and warmth of friends and family, even when my campfire is a mere smolder.

Farther out, more fires burn.  Not all fires blaze brightly.  Some are quite dim, and some have gone out. Some are deliberately stamped out, as people refuse to maintain their fires. Some just go out from neglect.  All fires require work to keep them burning, after all. As I watch, new fires are created...and some fires grow. As people are added to a family, their fire grows, and as the family members grow, they add their own abilities to supply fuel to the fire. As people join to create new families,so are new fires created, as each person takes a burning log from their families' fire, and joins it with their new family members' burning logs, and a new fire is made.
Some fires blaze quite brightly indeed, as people heap fuel onto their fire.Everything they have - love, joy, grief, sorrow - is put onto the flame.  Sometimes all I have to offer is pain, so that is what I give.  My fire doesn't burn very brightly, most days.  The pain is still here.  The fire will flicker higher, sometimes, and some days it will burn brightly and warmly for days in a row.  Sometimes, I have good days for weeks - and sometimes, I have bad days for weeks.
Always, always I offer it on the fire.  Because it is always what I have.