Counting my blessings

You my Jesus, my God, my brother.  I am overwhelmed.  I cannot walk with you unless you give me the strength - so you pray for me, and I learn to walk.

My godly grandparents and those even before you.  I weep in gratitude, what words can be expressed?  I am humbled by the faithfulness, you lovers of God and servants of all.  I pray Father you permit me such a wealth in impoverishment.

My husband.  No one apart from Divinity has imparted me with such grace.  You are a rock.  I will remain undeserving no matter my growth.

A year ago today I carried such a tiny child inside. Oh giver of great gifts, you have multiplied my eternal joy.

To those of you I am blessed to know, to those of you who have raised me, discipled and disciplined me, who have been my friend during different walks in our mutual lives, who have held me up or the very few who have pushed me down.  Our paths together were purposed and I praise our sovereign God.  I am thankful.

 



Homecoming

The concept has generally held positive regard for me
   even in how I perceive its occurrences in others' timelines.
I've lived with little pain and with no truly malicious suffering.
It's only more recently where I've begun to visualize
   the nuanced nature of homecoming for most.
For the undefeated, it's an expectant hope mixed with inevitable sorrow.
I honor the difficulties that faithfulness will bear in our broken world,
   how a determinate spirit will not only call but embrace a home
   where thorns grow wild in even a kept garden.
It is true; healing is actualized when flight born from fear is abandoned
   and the batterer and battered spirit in the same heart
   choose a God-breathed courage to accept their quintessential vulnerability.
Such beauty is fashioned in such a homecoming,
   where pleasure may be found if one is willing to persevere the pain.

The only choice before me...

In the den, in the hollow of the unknown
Oh dear Lord, please protect me
Are you not able?
Yes, I know you are
My certainty remains in your ability alone,
   without knowledge of your permissive will
I can submit
For I can choose to trust you and relinquish facaded control
My life, my joys as well as sufferings, my death, is the same
In the palm of your hand

Procrastination

What is it exactly that draws me to procrastination

Is it the potential for self-loathing

 The immeasurable personal frustration

 The pain or inconvenience inflicted on others

Is it the impossible drive for perfection

 The disappointment with the task

 A rebellion against authority

Is it a desire to fail

 The fear of what lies ahead

 Or just sheer disobedience of God

Fear Is Not

What is fear for me?

Confidence that I can misguide myself and others
      perhaps even with help from the enemy
It is distrust in God
It is an acknowledgement that I am inadequate
      but also so is my personal belief in Him
What am I afraid of that He cannot answer?
What enemy do I have, even in myself?
‘Fear not child for I Am with thee’
I fear my distance from His voice
      in a way which seems to validate it
A temptation to worry I feed to growth
For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the law,
      deceives me
But this too my King is conqueror over
And I belong to Him, l’melek
He’s given me such powerful freedom;
      I accept
What is fear?  It is not greater.

Milestone

God, my father, became my friend

A friend turned lover was the end

A boy approached the throne above
and asked my lover for my love

God took the hand He’d given me
and placed it in a bond of three

‘My Lord, my God,’ I humbly cried,
‘have you pushed me from your side?’

My heart trembled to think the Lamb
had plans for me apart from Him

Sweet silence was the peace I heard,
then I opened the Living Word

‘My plans for you are rich, believe,
have faith in me as I lead’

Days to months and now ten years
and my beloved I draw near

As I look up to see your face
Christ is what my eyes embrace

A gifted man, an honored son,
a temple for the Most High One

God turned not away from me
Yahweh weaved instead his unity 

Philippians 2:2 ‘…being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit...’

I started this poem a decade ago, so now I write ‘ten years’ and the last two lines.
Happy Anniversary Baby!  I hope you know I love you.



Way to Freedom

With trepidation but trust

          we forge through our fears

Choosing not to navigate

          their many courses of entrapment

But rather to close our eyes and see

          the choice of another plane,

          another plan entirely

Praise God who frees us from the

          enslavement of our past and

          sets our feet to the wind of His Spirit

I am both a bondwoman and a bondservant

 

"No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it."  I Corinthians 10:13

Bittersweet

I finished reading a book called ‘Bittersweet’ by Shauna Niequist last week while I was waiting during visitation to sit with a friend in jail.  Four months ago another friend, a student here at ETBU, had given me the book in hope to help me walk through our miscarriages with the aim of healing.  I wanted to honor the author and the broader story in all our lives by including some portions of her thoughts which have been good companions to me during these times.

“Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful… a sliver of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich when it contains a splinter of sadness.  Bittersweet is the practice of believing that we really do need both the bitter and the sweet, and that a life of nothing but sweetness rots both your teeth and your soul.  Bitter is what makes us strong, what forces us to push through…. Bittersweet is beautiful, nuanced, full of depth and complexity… [it is] courageous, gutsy, earthy.” (p.11)

“It’s not hard to decide what you want your life to be about.  What’s hard… is figuring out what you’re willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.” (p.54)

“Grace…. it’s forgiveness without forgetting, which is much sweeter than amnesia.” (p.83)

“Sometimes pain makes us selfish, myopic, and utterly unable to understand people whose pain is different than ours.  It shouldn’t be that way.  It should be that all pain softens us to all pain.” (p.123)

“God’s will, should we choose to engage in it, will generally feel like surgery, rooting out all the darkness and fear we’ve come to live with.” (p.231)

“The question is not, will my life be easy or will my heart break?  But rather, when my heart breaks, will I choose to grow?” (p.233)

“If you’ve been sitting quietly, year after year, hoping that someone will finally start speaking a language that makes sense to you, may I suggest that you are that person?  If you’ve been longing to hear a new language for faith, one that rises and falls like a song, may I suggest that you start singing?  If you want your community to be marked by radical honesty, by risky, terrifying, ultimately redemptive truth-telling, you must start telling your truth first.” (p.240)

Five Seats of Emotion

             mind
             throat
                heart
                 gut
            womb

5 times over my sadness is felt
I cannot turn from it
It follows my every move
I haven't the energy to run
Either way it'd be useless
Its shadow is deep, quiet and miserable
And life hobbles on regardless

Truth

Truth is always now, never about the future

It is not a tell-some or even tell-all decision

It is a moment by moment choice

It doesn't rationalize or weigh options

It simply exists unaltered, unadulterated

Truth is home to freedom

The Moth

I didn’t know what it was at first, almost like a rattle. I drifted back to sleep, that prayerful kind of sleep that you have on lazy mornings where no alarm is set but the sun through the curtainless blinds. Then the sound again, slightly more alert I realize it’s fluttering. Back to sleep. Now it’s near my face and my eyes crack open to see a moth darting across the room clearly out of place. I watch it for a while thinking about how I feel like that sometimes, like I belong in another world as I struggle against my confinements. My mind wrestles that topic. Again sounds of rattling, and I turn from those thoughts and watch as the moth thrashes about the venetian blinds throwing itself over again into the obstacle standing between itself and what it’s drawn to. Getting nowhere, it stops and (for all I know about moths) ‘sees’ that if it heads to the edge of the blinds it can get closer to its apparent goal. Once the moth is at last behind the blinds up against the glass it returns to its flight frenzy… cacophonous little fellow.

I think to a friend of mine, drawn to entrapments bathed in light. I’m not so unlike him. Seeking whatever it is we seek only to be scorched by the heat that saps our energy and causes us to forget the exit from which we entered. Or maybe it’s pride. Or both. Either way, same effect, the moth slowed down. I laid in bed knowing the moth would probably die in that window. If my husband was here I could say, ‘honey go get that moth’ and he’d take hold of it in his hand and might take it outside. I could be willing to get out of bed and open the blinds, offering a limited kind of freedom. But instead I decided to read a book and let time have its way with the moth. An hour later I hear a tingy flutter, not fast and furious like this morning, but slowed and clumsy. The moth emerges between slits in the venetian blinds and falls to the window ledge and then to the floor. The ‘experiment’ is done. No intervention necessary. The moth got out on its own. Of course, an hour later the moth was dead.

And this is the crux of my questions. Not what can we do as really the possibilities are endless. But what should we do if we’re not ourselves stuck against the deadly temptations of a hot window pane and blinds that somehow seemed like the most desirable thing at the time? What do I do for my friends, the people God’s grafted into my life, when they stop caring about me or themselves and pursue what ultimately will become their destruction? How many times do I forgive?, because to me right now, seven sounds like a lot of grace. And what does forgiveness mean; does it require repetitive action, even rescue? What about the unforgettable answer Jesus painted with His blood? I’m no savior, not even if I wanted to be, so how far does this action on His part translate into my life with others? What does it mean to love even with the near certainty that the loved one rescued will continue to abandon safety and pursue the flame? That’s what really kept me in bed this morning, not apathy. Personal pain and encompassing sorrow are my heartaches as I watched the morning moth struggle and die. I don’t want this for anyone, especially not those I care about, but I don’t know what to do.

Grief Sanctuary

A quiet Hebrew cemetery a 3-minute walk from my front door has offered me solace and comfort. A sense of solidarity is found when I can mourn where many have stood or fallen and wept over loved ones on this same sanctuary ground throughout the century past.

Words etched in stone there possess meaning for me.

‘In the midst of life we are in death’

‘O, what is life since death so soon o’ertake; Our best beloved and sweet communion breaks?’

‘How desolate our home bereft of thee’


But with the grief, hope is no second runner. My favorite is here.

‘Say not good-night,
but in some brighter clime bid me good morning’

This is how, God willing, I want to greet ones we’ve lost.

This cemetery testifies beyond the grave words I long for…
How I desire this yes, for myself,
but even more so for my descendants.

‘In life, a prince of charity, the orphan’s rock and pious guide;
in death, in all eternity, a son of God and man’s true prize.’

I’ve struggled with these losses. But I am thankful for them.
The depth of my person is paradoxically richer in this poverty.
My God who cries has had me as companion, and I have had him.
It is not a child for whom I wait,
Though days of late might have me wonder if I could weep forever.
The child-etcher, the one who creates within his own creation,
whose fingerprints I bear and will also recognize on those I bear;

It is he I wait continually for, as he also waits for me.
 

Luke 22:42

I am in I am

I am not more than I am
but because of one who is
I am
in reality more like Him than the other

Job 1:21

What is innocent today, untarnished

I knew one nearly untouched

Except for the fastening hands of the Creator

I grieve and celebrate in the same peaceful thought

Perhaps you are where I long for

With my tender most precious one

Has he named you I wonder

Our Rohi left all unspoken

And your secrets safe

I am content to wait

You were not crafted for these pursuits

Mirrored

I look in the mirror, whose image do I see
Where is the reflection of my invisible King

Who am I without his breath
Am I the aroma of life and death

Let me will to forgo my gift of choice
Present history speaks to my variable voice

Suffer this request and suffer us not the rest
For I rent our pair of hearts with willful neglect

Loose Hold

My oxygen is hot molasses
I suffocate
Death has its way over me
I feel such hate encamped about
An object of evil wrath
I calm my heart and close my eyes
and fight not for my wasting life
Death is victory.  Death is friend.
But my Creator cares not for this end
The clutch is broken, I gasp fresh air
The evil one and his song despair
is gone, and still not I care
Tomorrow feels my enemy
Death my gain
But He has chosen and my cross I'll bear

Pain

Shall I delight in pain

Clearly seeing myself both sinful and redeemed

No guessing... in pain I know

I can call the demon tempters out, scream my freedom and it is so

I see Christ in me in ways unknown

Redemption transforms a friend from foe

Shall I thank you for my pain

Do you love you so much to grant me this gain

I cry, but I come and I cling

And I know then as ever - you are all I need

In the anguish there is purity I dare not request

But I'd be blind indeed not to recognize the gift

The fool I am

I feel as if to rewrite the Psalms


How would you have me

Deaf, blind, dumb

Perhaps

A fool I am

At your design, your time

I will be had as you will have me

Take me mute, ignorant, broken, poor

I choose your lot for me

Because I love you more

Than other 'loves'

My Lord


I Corinthians 4:10a 'We are fools for Christ...'

Exodus 4:11 'The Lord said to him, 'Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord?'


It is you Lord.

Bloody Victor

Love, the great slayer

I am maimed, I am slain

How many deaths can be passed for gain

Vulnerability is pain

Pain is life

Life without feeling is life died

My example is heartless

He gave it up

Over again to be trampled and crushed

How did he bear, how did he stand

He forsook his power, he was just a man

Oh God I am weak, but I'll never be strong

If I harden my heart

I close out all in one

I love not my God if I love not my brother

But who is my mother, my sister, my brother!?!

I know the answer, oh God this is hard

I drink your Spirit, I consume your Word

I love the slain lover as he lives to love

Through me to you, my cries yield to his blood

Learnt at a Loss

This time

though others might say the sin is against me

I choose no offense

Birthed in hate, it is against another

A far more precious one

Let us mourn for sin in myself and others

I am no innocent

Today I know something others debate

Our precious Jesus descended to hell

He knew no sin; he BECAME SIN for us

Separated from his self

Thereby his own 'deeper magic'

We can option freedom

For this, Christ's blood was spilt

He Fled

'No!, Satan, No!

I am NOT alone;

I will NEVER be alone.

JESUS became alone

so I never must be

if I choose.'



I am chosen and I have chosen.