Stitch Me Up

I got what I need,
there's no reason for me to bleed,
so can you stitch me up please?
I'm tired of falling apart
- tired of feeling this aching heart
if only
there was a way
to rewind
and erase it all from my mind
so it'd stop replaying
and stop relaying
- bringing it back
and throwing me off track
when trying to move forward
without you
is enough
with our memories
thick about me
as the air I breathe
so much time spent wondering
only in reprieve
when you'll bid me
a farewell I can believe.

That Once Brewed Quietly

When you get to breathing easy and laughing again, life throws you another one...

It's been a difficult, strange year, and I can't help but think the me before all that's happened would've been more chipper and resilient, but at this point I'm just so tired. Tired of feeling second string, - or like having feelings is some horrendous burden to bear. I'd say "I'm sorry" for being a feeler, but I'm not and I don't know how to be any other way.

And I feel so far away from everyone. Another cyclical, seasonal thing I go through - in tandem, usually, with my spiritual deserts - whose repetition I can never seem to figure out. I find myself in that place with little hope that I'll ever stop having these seasons, knowing in part this round is due to re-entry to the single life. I don't have much hope for it to feel different, the only hope I do have is that God will grow something in me through it. That maybe somehow in being parched for the very thing I crave and need most, I will find that quenched in Him, even though it doesn't feel like it right now.

I naively felt as though I already knew my low seasons in life many years ago. I don't say naively because they weren't low, but because I believed probably out of self-preservation that more would not come; I'd hit the quota. Somehow in that I felt brave, to endure and be strong. However, this year has broken many of my constructs about what I can endure, and what I want, and even what I already have. It has near evaporated the hope that once brewed quietly, a slow-rolling boil.

So as I have finally picked myself up and dusted myself off, I am tired, and faint, and lonely, with only the hope that my Refuge will come to me, lift me from my weariness, and set things right. Even though the hope is weary. 

Slack: Never So Steady

**Disclaimer: This piece was written pre-deconstruction of religious beliefs and faith system. Many of these beliefs inform the sentiments of the writing and are not in alignment with my values. As this is a part of my journey and an extensive blog over years, I have chosen not to remove a majority of my posts written on faith. Please as a reader, take this into consideration and take what works for you, leave what does not. I also apologize for any harm my words from this past perspective may cause to any readers.**

I have books piling on the empty side of my full-sized bed. Most of them books about feelings stuff and relationships, one about overcoming, two journals, and several folded bulletins covered in sermon notes (the ones with an asterisk are things my pastor said that particularly struck me). And my bible, the small one that I bought to take with me on my six-month mission trip five years ago.

Five years ago this summer, I was on a mission trip having the time of my life, dodging cockroaches and motorbikes like a native, and feeling like God was in everything, great and small. I actually woke up early to read my bible in the morning - me! I was fearless and I was on fire. Eleven years ago this summer, I was on a mission trip in Appalachia when I "came to Jesus", as they say. A year ago this summer, I was nervously choking out the words "I love you" to a man.

Seasons roll over us recklessly like waves do in the ocean, complete disregard for you in their path. Here I am in the path as the waves roll over me. I don't really know what this season is, - maybe low tide? Instead of relishing in God's goodness to me, or seeing it all over the world, my heart is weary, and I feel like I see Him almost nowhere. It's strange because I haven't stopped believing what I do, but it just doesn't feel very impacting against the raging world, and the pain in my own heart and my own back yard. It feels like God is being quiet. And that doesn't make me much want to pick up the bible next to me in my bed.

Very in line with the metaphor, I have found that seasons like this in my life ebb and flow, although it feels one was never so steady as this. A thing happens with tides between the high and the low, the current has to slow to change directions (forgive me if I butchered it, I'm not sciency, I'm feely). This is a period called slack water, when it is calm and quiet. I can't say I'm in the calm and quiet of life, but certainly a calm and quiet of my faith. My hope is that this is something like the changing of the tides, this quietness.

A favorite author, speaker, thinker, teacher of mine, Graham Cooke talks about how we have seasons of manifestation and conversely, hiddenness. Times when we feel like we are running hand-in-hand with God and seeing His glory in the land of the living, and then there's times when we feel like we don't know where God went but He sure isn't with us. Cooke says that's when God is growing things in you and moving unbeknownst to you. That has been my little seed of hope that even though things feel completely stagnant, God is at work.

And surely He must be; surely the tides must soon turn. I guess that's one thing an ebb and flow ensures: one must always be followed by the other.

Crash

One weak, coaxed sentence,
two words
ones I
told you
to tell me
- wanted you to sell me,
but you lacked in presence
then pleaded your innocence
never pulling up
seemingly embracing
the crash and burn.