Monday, April 29, 2019

April Showers

My soul is not a pendulum alternating between grace and justice.  Your love is not a carrot that you tangle just out of my reach.  Nor is it an obligation that you begrudgingly bestow upon us.  You choose us.  You chose us.  You want what is best for us.  You want us to see ourselves as You see us.  You want to share Your love so that we may become who You made us to be.  I don't need a missing puzzle piece, this jigsaw is complete.  I am enough.  I am sufficient as is, no assembly required.  I don't need fancy words or a wife to fill me up.

Please don't read this as flattery or imagined adoration.  This is not a "fake it 'til you make it" scenario.  I can make it from here.  I'm just looking for the steps as I gradually crawl from the darkened shadows.  I'm walking and growing ever so slowly to move from living to thriving.  This right here.  The soul beneath this skin is not made of dandelions and clovers.  The soil is enriched with nutrients.  I am flowers coming up for air in springtime.  Rain falls.  Sun scorches.  Even worms crawl in my midst.  But I am flowers, not afraid of growing.

Courage takes vulnerability and I am on my way.
Please plant me near the flowing stream.  Renew me from the roots up, refreshed in the gentle breeze.

Thursday, April 18, 2019

Just Loneliness

No one warned me.  They never teach us in school of the isolation of independence.  They don't tell us how to endure days on end with little more than ticking clocks.  I'm finding more of me these days, but in a way that is less and less social.  It's like these opaque walls are mirrors staring back at me, silently judging my near inability to budge.

I miss the thunderstorms, the rain that I could match.  I miss having what I thought was nothing, the quiet conversations in the background with familiar voices.  I feel like I don't know anyone here, especially my own reflection.  Who is the man staring back at me?  How can I find a way out of this chasm if I don't even know where I am?  Some may say to retrace my steps, but that's part of what I thought I did and my footprints have long since been buried.  I knew it wouldn't be the same but why can't I even push myself out from underneath this anti-sociability.  No, that can't be true; surely I must be exaggerating to some extent there..

My very being feels like a whisper cascading down blank concrete walls.  Where I used to see potential now lay a dead battery.  Sometimes I smell the tempting scent of an anticipatory blank canvas, but I can't always trace it's origins.  My legs don't carry me like they used to.  Those words sound older than I am but I don't have a stroller nor someone to push me anymore.  Maybe it was once some thing instead of someone.  I cannot tell you for sure.

So many misses.  I should join a horseshoe club.  So deep in thought when I want to be active.  So empty when most of what they see surely appears put together.  How do I reveal this without crashing?  How do I run without running away or just seeking to hide?  I wish I could tell you how I feel but I don't even know who you are.  I don't even have words except this wasted jumble of letters. Who can relate?  Who can hear me whispering ever louder into the vast abyss?  Why bother?  What's the point of trying anymore?  What purpose does any of this serve?  After all, it's all just a chasing of the wind, isn't it?  Does anything push a gear further that leads to something more than large-scale progress?  Is there a crank that promotes personal progress?  If so, why haven't I found it yet?  Why does it elude my grasp?

Is this just loneliness?
Or perhaps
is this loneliness just?