Some of my own personal demons threatened my new year with whispers of post traumatic stress disorder, illness and fatigue, seasonal affective disorder (that would be: I’m depressed and sick of winter and cold) and the after holiday lull.
I don’t know when I’ll see my grandchildren next. My house was in an uproar. Er, some of it still IS in an uproar. Interpersonal Communication with my family wasn’t going well. Circumstances ’were making me’ sad, anxious, hopeless and ready to run down the very same path I’ve always run come January. It seems I regularly write a sad poem in the New Year as if it’s my resolution - my decision - to walk another year being depressed, dragging my past behind me like a Linus blanket. Never letting go. Taking ‘it’ with me every place I trod - into my marriage, my parenting, my grand parenting, my work, my hobbies. I pull the weighted blanket faithfully along. Two steps forward, one step back. Or, one step forward, two steps back. Never making headway.
Writing about healing as if it was mine and wanting it to be yours, I struggled yet again with the desire to give up. This won’t do! I’m not fully healed! The ‘voices‘ are back inside my head. I won’t write. I won't try. I won’t. I won’t. I won’t. (insert pouty face)
Then I remembered that courage is a choice. Love is a choice. Healing, often, is a choice.
On the flip side, fear is a choice. Anger is a choice. And often, staying wounded is a choice.
With that in mind, I chose to write a new poem. I chose to write a poem about the only One and the only value that I know to be life’s antidote, even mid-January, when all the voices inside my head go off like a million alarm clocks threatening to rouse me from my healing and my joy.
I want Love to awaken me.
Never reaching for the snooze button.
I choose to reach for Love, instead.
Love, Instead O Great God,
Silence the voices inside my head
Protect me from the monsters underneath my bed
Take away the fear, the dread
And let me hear Love instead.
Give me patience when all patience is gone
Give me kindness when I’ve been mean and wrong
Let me not be proud, jealous or rude
Let me not be selfish, provoked or grudgingly brood
Let me rejoice in what is right and true
Give me a spirit to forbear and to endure,
Let me believe and let love never fail,
To always hope, until we lift the veil.
And let Love be my grown up cause
Let Love give me occasion to pause
And put down the cymbals,
Lay down the gong
Become something for the Kingdom
And ‘make profit’ for Your Son
And let me Love.
God-like love.
Laying down my life for another
Forgiving my brother
Moving towards the other
Giving lavishly, like the Father.
Let me hear Love
Cast out fear
Let me hear Love
When I am weary
Let me hear Love
In my deep sacred places
Let me hear Love
In the inward spaces
O Great God,
Silence the voices inside my head
Let me hear Love, instead.
cjz
2020 January 6
1 Corinthians 13
