Breaking

Driving blind,

on instinct alone

remembering nothing about how I got from there to here

so great is my exhaustion.

So numerous my tears.

I will cave.

I already know.

Too heavy the world on my shoulders.

Bowing beneath the weight of endless hell, I only want escape.

Everyone wanting something from me,

taking and taking and taking

each little piece of me breaking off.

I don't want to know it's happening,

want to just let go and let it be what it is while I drift away in my mind, unaware and complacent.

Soon I will let relief wash over me.

While the physical bonds remain,

I will soar free

higher than ever before,

high enough to reach out,

maybe even high enough to grasp your hand and allow you to pull me up

to freedom.

Bipolar or whatever shit you're dealing with

Bipolar or Whatever Shit You're Dealing With.

What you don't know can't hurt you.

Bullshit.

What you don't know can kill you.

Learn.

Be aware of the statistics.

Bulshit.

They are only a form of confusion.

Go day by day.

Give up before you hurt someone.

Bulshit.

That someone would be destroyed.

Tell yourself it'll go away.

Bulshit.

Accept reality.

Pretend your behavior is justified.

Bulshit.

If you're thinking that, it's not.

Think you can do it on your own.

Bulshit.

Tell that to the you that ends up on the bathroom floor at 3am with a bottles worth of trazadone in your hand.

Decide you're failing.

Bulshit.

You're alive aren't you?

Decide you're worthless.

Bulshit.

God doesn't make worthless.

Tell yourself no one understands.

Bulshit.

5.7 million people understand,

And so does anyone that you take the time to talk to.

Tell yourself God made a mistake.

Bulshit.

God doesn't do mistakes, he does mercy and miracles, grace and forgivness, love, compassion, strength, and rest.

Tell yourself God won't forgive you.

Bulshit.

Too late.

Support

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It glittered in the sun

as she went to pick it up.

But it sliced her finger

and she drew back, afraid.

But there it lay, still

and she felt a need to try again.

She put on a glove,

reached down,

and this time she grasped it.

But as she tried to pull it out it sliced through her glove and again ripped open her hand.

This time badly.

But still it had her attention,

so she wrapped her bleeding hands in her sweatshirt,

bent down,

and with both hands tried to pull it free.

She felt it move before it sliced both hands down to the bone.

But now, it had budged,

and this encouraged her,

so despite her ruined hands,

she wrapped the object of her desire in a towel, grasped it in agony,

and pulled and pulled and pulled.

Finally, in a last effort the object came free and she caught a glance of it

just before she fell onto it,

where it pierced her heart,

and she died.

A man appeared on the beach beside her and said:

“If only she could have asked for help, she would not have had to struggle so hard that it killed her.”

7 Sunflowers

7 Sunflowers

“If I just hang on here, I'll die of boredom”

Why am I stuck clinging here?

I was just sitting there, drifting, making castles in the sky, and someone quietly slipped in and shut the wardrobe door.

Maybe they were just pipe dreams,

but they were my manna.

Maybe I was dreaming the impossible dream,

but maybe I wasn't.

Who shut the door, and whispered to me to go quietly into the night,

and why didn't I notice?

If I had gone into that night with purpose i’d have found Totoro

making acorn seeds sprout into tall strong trees in my garden.

I don't remember deciding to stay put,

don't remember deciding that resistance is futile.

Where was my sassy smart ass nonconformity?

Was that enormous lovely chair so comfortable I never wanted to move?

But I have always wanted to move.

It's not my nature to stay put.

Yet I did not.

I forgot who I was, forgot to open the door, forgot to let the sunshine in.

I sat in the cold dark, never warm,

without hope, without dreams, dead,

feeling my water drain away.

Who shut the door?

Who made me forget?

Was it the blue hands?

Or the Black men?

Was it The Doctor?

The shock therapy?

I think not.

I was deceived.

The Great Deceiver created an illusion from which I did not know to break free.

But the Messiah flew in like a leaf on the wind,

walked through the wall of my prison, not even bothering with the door,

grabbed the head of the snake by the neck and snapped it into a huge staff,

which he then used to part the waves of my apathy.

And I watched in wonder as a gull flew high above the parted sea and called to me to learn to fly.

My door opened not onto the world I have been previously a part of,

but onto a whole nother planet

that I had somehow been interacting with all along.

And curiously I followed a red ball as it bounced past me toward a field of snow and a beautiful sled.

I felt Temba, his arms open,

as I climbed onto the sled with the future in my arms wrapped in a exqusite tapestry crying “take me with you”,

and nodded to a good lion, though not a tame one, and said

“I'm ready.”

For Shawn

For Shawn

Sitting in the car

she breathed deep into his shirt

finding the smell of him.

And I saw her again as she was when I entered that room.

Sitting beside her son,

searching the body in the casket

for both a man, and a boy.

Leaning back in her seat, she says the tee shirt is new and clean,

the transition home must have provided him with it.

Plain black, but comfortable and of good quality.

At least he was dressed in a respectable way when he died.

In that room I take her hand and give her tissues,

and ask her to tell me about him.

I see the man before me,

but I experience the boy.

She cries, she laughs,

she remembers,

and though I never met him,

I remember with her.

Door open, face in the sun,

she takes the blue flannel from the bag.

This is the one she breathes.

She is pleased that her son was clean

and well cared for.

That when he died he had some dignity.

She tells me these things to keep her agony at bay.

Later she will hold them to her face

or wear them, or sleep with them,

saying goodbye to the man who used to be the boy.

I hug her in the room, in the car,

in the artificial light,

in the unfairly bright sun.

And when the room with a hundred hugs has become a parking lot with four, and soon to be only two,

and two short days later, only one,

and the big event is over,

there in will lie the pain.

But for now we hold her,

we bring her other son to her,

and then we drive away.

Instantly missing them all,

And wishing we could take the sorrow away with us,

and leave his family only joy.

4

4

Desolation:

The words I need to hear,

unsaid.

The breaking of my heart

instead.

The confidence I need

is crushed.

I hate that I need you

so much.

Certainty of success

is gone

along with the hope to which

I've clung.

You who I thought could see

me through,

you were nothing but

a ruse.

You didn't try to cheer

me there

you just laid the truth out

bare.

The truth of which

i'm terrified.

The fear that makes me want

to die

to all your lies:

Desolation.

The Moment I Met Jesus in my Heart

The Moment I met Jesus in My heart

For Steve Treichler who gave me my faith

I sat in that hard pew

rapt attention encasing me

because the question set me apart.

It broke me, and fixed me, confused and explained, and set me apart .

Pastor Steve, in his typical way,had  found a way to catch me in his net of fish, and then tell me I could breathe out of water.

And made it true.

And he got exactly the answer he expected with all the raised hands in the room.

But not mine.

Because I knew the truth.

Without thinking about it, and with no question, I knew my truth.

And that day, when I was so afraid to admit what was inside, what has always been inside,

he stood there and said that what I already knew, was everybody's truth,

they just didn't know it.

I never told him that was my defining moment, the moment I became His.

Later, I learned the depth and truth of the Savior I had chosen,

but in that moment, in that knowledge that I not only had permission to be what I was, it was exactly what I was supposed to be, what we all were, why we needed a savior at all.

He set me free from my anger and rebellion and hatred and resistance.

I'm not going to say I never strugled with it again, not going to say I never even aimed to be perfect, not going to say I never questioned or faltered.

But that question has rung in my life every day since he asked it.

“Do you know Jesus personally?”

And everyone's hand went up but mine.

“Do you know Satan personally?”

And none raised their hand but in my terribly clear mind, I knew.

I knew that's all I knew.

And in that moment I found suddenly

that I could choose the other voice. The truth. And I listened to him speak of the deciever, and the love of Christ, and barely hearing him, I heard Him.

And I chose.

And I never told you Steve, never said the words that I have carried through every storm.

“Yes, I know satan personally.

I know him intimately. But now I Know someone else too. And it makes every bit of difference.”