Black Coffee Green Tea

How can it be so heavy? How can one, knowing who you are and sensing the fullness of who you were meant to be, be so easily crippled by fear and burdened by sorrow?

What strong spirits fill such fragile bodies. I have never felt so alien, so meant for something else. The pain and annoyance of my frailty empowers as much as it tempts me to lie down, distracted, and leave living the daily being of life to someone else. Not so unlike a thorn in the paw of a lion, I feel fierce enough in soul and strength to go about raging through the darkness looking for something to relieve and fulfill, but I am in enough agony to long for simpering in a dark corner to somehow be enough.

But only so much simpering for so long... only so much darkness for so long. I was never one to wallow for forever.


My dear God,

I am not afraid to be angry, or in anguish-- it does not terrify me to feel. I do not like dealing with my humanity, but it forces me to face my desperate need for you, and to acknowledge your desperate acceptance of me. It is so ugly to be so raw, like a giant wound walking about-- continually healing and being made whole, but forever in process. I, however, did not know I could feel so much-- such a complex range of emotions. I knew I could feel deeply, but I did not know the width of the depth. It was to the point today to have feelings but no words, only knowing the intangible reality of what it is to want to be loved and in community but finding yourself in repeated retreat.


You are working it out in me. Please don't stop bringing this brokenness into the perfect light of redemption. In my weakness you are strong... not that you suddenly become some Herculean figure to rescue me, but that your strength becomes more real to me, and through that reality faith, and through faith access to the presence of that strength. Then, without warning, I have invited you in and welcomed you as my strength. You were the stronger all the while, but you are a God who gives us the POWER to choose... to embrace weakness to gain true strength-- and ultimately, to be made whole.


Pessimism, Optimism, Realistic? There's You, that's what I know, I want to see with Your eyes, however painful to love so fully... It's You that keeps me soft, but help to keep me whole in the softness, without being crushed.


You didn't say it wasn't a great burden, you simply said that it was light... if only because I'm not carrying it alone, if only because You call me to surrender it to yourself, to share it with others.

My sweet Lord, I'm no martyr in this... I don't pretend to be. I'm not Joan of Arc, no Saint Patrick, no virgin queen... but God help me to be more like You, with a quiet jealous love that doesn't curse the thing it admires, though the love is often unrequited.