Oh there is a war inside of me, pulling me
away with defeat and closer with every victory. As the years go by I trudge on
with my trademarked moves and stick stubbornly to tools of my own devising. As
I wage I feel His gaze, like someone watching me from behind. My first instinct is to ask how I’m
doing but there’s no time to lose; I’ve got to keep going. There are things
that I need, people I want, and accomplishments I crave. Yielding any ground on
those things or those people, even to you, feels like giving up. If I stop
trying, manipulating, chasing I might lose them all. Even the imagined thought
of loss, of failure or the unthinkable ultimate regret strangles and my chest
tightens.
In the haze of fear, I desperately follow
a barely audible promise that you are teaching me something new, that I’m
becoming something new. The thought excites me, floods me; I strain harder to
listen. He says His thoughts are higher than mine and His ways are higher too. What
if He knows me so deeply that He loves the things that I love? I interject! Oh
God, help me to go higher! Show me how it’s done! I’m always afraid, always
scared that I’ve missed it. Always worried that if I don’t get it right
everything will implode, and I’ll be maimed and worthless. Then I lose a
battle. I do the things that I don’t want to do and feel the shame, and know
I’m already worthless.
You carry my weak body, flesh and spirit alike, past
the violence of the war around us. You force open my blind eyes, causing them to
see something beyond the anguish and angst I feel over and within my own soul.
You pull me with you to the clouds to see from above what I had missed from
below. It’s bigger than me. It’s
so wonderfully bigger than me. The sting of death, of failure, has vanished in
the blazing dawn of victory. The
eternal and the infinite are at work here. Love is law and all is won.
