My soul swells.
It reaches through my heart to a deeper realm,
And yanks from the depths.
Raking it through my body,
Where beauty is lost in the moment
But found in the aftermath.
It’s not the burning of a world I tried to trust;
Wrapping its hand around my neck.
And the tears falling are not purely
From the aching hole of loss.
And the flickering of light slowly building
Is not sure if this is its place.
It’s a collective.
Like my soul didn’t even glance
At what it brought up
Out of my hidden.
But why? Why not look?
What is so precious and protected?
A part of myself that I almost never volunteer to share,
Not on my own.
And when it is thrust forth
Into the space around me,
And my heart is being pulled
In the directions my head is trying to reason.
And the child,
Who has bared her own hidden,
Involuntarily
Has collided with mine.
The tears from hers cling to my chest,
And arms wrap around my waist.
And mine whispers sweet truths she needs to hear.
What then?
Is there more to offer
Than my own jumbled confusion?
I’ve offered as much love as I can muster.
When I step back,
And the moment,
The collision of two,
Broken and hopeful
Is just a vapor,
What then?
The flickering light,
building its esteem.
Reflecting off pieces we saw as broken
Before beauty took their place.
The revelation
of the deepest self
So far down
It physically hurts to rip it forth.
The relationship
That caused the hidden to be found
In the first place.
What comes then?
How many more times
Do I push out so much love
My soul’s hand reaches through
And wrecks me again.
Is that worth it?
Wouldn’t I rather sit, listen
Experience from the outside.
Where I can see what is being done,
But not through me.
Where the epicenter of it all
Just skirts my toes.
Don’t be pulled into the ease
Of a life filled with nothing
And a path where fire cannot burn.
Numbness does not bring pain or sorrow
But it also does not bring joy.
Give it up.
The idea that life is meant for a box.
That we are designed for
Safety without danger
Certainty without risk
Beauty without reality
And love without pain.
Take when so much is given and give.
Even when my soul swells
With more than my heart can muster,
And my head can reason.
And the circumstance causes me to shred my soul
And paste it back together
Over and over.
There is so much more.
A path engulfed with things my mind cannot even hold.
Let her know
Her path is the same.
If there are no more truths to share
And the light,
Trying to establish its place
Is being dimmed,
Pass her the flame.
The one given to me,
That I chose to take and keep
Down in my deepest part.
For in me the fire has already caught
And burns steadily.
Even if I tend to look away
And be caught in the ach and toil around me.
But through the confusion of pulling it out
And giving it away
What more were we asked to do?
Than to live without regret
And walk the path engulfed in flame
And let the collision of our exposed selves
Tell the story.
__________________________________________________________
I wrote this reflecting on the story of one of the girls at the center we have been working at this month. My team has been working at the Sandra Jones Center in Zimbabwe, a safe house for women and children who have experience several different kinds of abuse. Yesterday we got to experience something that exemplified God’s faithfulness.
One of the young women at the center, a new mom as of a few weeks ago, met her own mother. Yesterday, a woman came to the center and met with her. She later shared with us that it was her mom, and she has not seen her since she was two years old. We don’t know the circumstances as to why she has been gone, they were not shared, but we could see the confusion and hope she had. What young girl, especially a teen mom, doesn’t think of needing and wanting her mother as she starts the journey of motherhood herself? She left the center later that day to go home with her mom, and her newborn daughter, permanently.
One of my teammates is particularly close to this mom and I watched her grieve and rejoice with her and what was about to happen in her life, as she decided to leave the center and pursue the beginnings of a healing relationship with her mom. There was sadness, confusion and joy, but this teammate loved her so well that she opened her own fears and hopes, and sobbed into her at the idea of leaving. It was a beautiful thing to witness God’s faithfulness in this women’s life, and not fully understand it. But it was painful, it didn’t make sense, and being able to in turn hold and comfort my teammate on the other side and just be in the middle of what God was doing made me think a lot of how we are meant to live and love no matter what.
