I feel this compulsion to write again,
To try to express something new and different
Than the thousand thousand ways I’ve written before.
Words have always been my comfort,
My way of pushing the envelope of my emotions
Until I can define and quantify some aspect of myself
In a verbal space that others identify with—
All with a hope that I will help my fragile emotional state
Settle down into something steadier,
Easier to deal with,
Not quite so overwhelming in the end.
…And with some vague idea
That I can help someone else in the process,
Anyone who feels with an inability to articulate those feelings.
Yet here I am, back again,
Caught in a swirl of tumultuous inner upheaval,
Trying to claw my way back to sanity
By way of letters and words jumbled together on a page.
Today it feels like it’s all just going, “Splat!”
The bifurcation of myself between
Analysis and experience doesn’t seem to help at all.
I wonder…
Maybe I should stop trying to segregate my soul
Instead of integrating my being
Into wholeness…completeness.
Is it possible to be centered,
Smack in the middle of all the troubling sensations,
Fully aware of all the logical implications??
Trusting my Comforter, Brother, Father
To hold me securely inside the Christ anointing
Until I come into Their/His order
Rather than my own???
What if it really is okay to feel, think, move, function—
All of them at the same time!
Because ultimately,
“In Him we live and move and have our being…”[*]
I cannot seem to be satisfied with that,
Though in the core of who I am
I know it is Truth.
The weight, the jumble of life
Keeps catching up to me when I’m not expecting it.
I focus on the circumstances just in front of me,
Putting off the consequences of my choices,
Till suddenly I am forced to stop.
The burdens of yesterday’s decisions catch up,
Jerking me off my feet,
Landing me on the ground
Where I sit shaking my head in a daze,
Wondering what, exactly, happened…
Then I go,
“Oh yeah… that…”
All the stuff surrounds me
Like a big cloud of dust I displaced
When I fell on the dry ground.
I just want water again…
Living water.
Father keeps telling me
It’s okay to be still, to rest.
This is where Word, Living Word,
Rises in my heart again.
“The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.
It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the Lord.
It is good for a man to bear
The yoke in his youth.
Let him sit alone and keep silent,
Because God has laid it on him;
Let him put his mouth in the dust—
There may yet be hope.
Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him
And be full of reproach.
For the Lord will not cast off forever.
Though He causes grief,
Yet He will show compassion
According to the multitude of His mercies.
For He does not afflict willingly,
Nor grieve the children of men.”
Lamentations 3:25-33
Many people quote verses 22-23,
How many go on?
How many read it all in the context
Of Jeremiah’s lament for his people?
Or how about verses 38-41…
“Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
That woe and well-being proceed?
Why should a living man complain,
A man for the punishment of his sins?
Let us search out and examine our ways,
And turn back to the Lord;
Let us lift our hearts and hands
To God in heaven.”
So, Jeremiah keeps calling to his people,
But they turn a deaf ear.
Will I listen?
Will I turn?
Will I repent of my self-seeking,
Self-focused way of living
That turns away from “the Lord,
The fountain of living waters”
To hew myself “broken cisterns that can hold no water?”[†]
Then the cloud of dust subsides,
The air clears, and I notice
The quiet stream beside my path.
My weary, thankful heart remembers grace
As my trembling hands reach for His arms.
Before I am barely conscious of it,
I find myself stepping forwards,
Able to go on in His strength,
Not my own.
Just like that He’s brought me back around
Making sense out of my nonsense,
Reminding me that He guides me—
My thoughts, my feelings, my fingers, my focus
As I allow His Spirit to flow through me.
Yup…there it is again:
“In Him we live and move and have our being…”