I am my secrets. They make me human. And yet, if I don’t trust you enough to share them, I will die of my shame. I need you to know my despair.
I need to tell you that today my heart is aching. I need you to believe that my masks are not all lies. You do know me, because I always tell you the truth. About my despondence — my anguish that comes too easily. I need to tell you about the internal corruption that sits with me night and day mocking me. And that I sit with my secrets wondering where are the friends to reassure me that everything will be okay?
Where is God to say that his Truth is all that I need?
Damn you, fear. Damn you pain that sits lodged inside me. I am choking on it right now. I thought for a minute I kicked this habit of despair.
I don’t doubt the fact of knowing you God. I am certain that you are there. Knowing you love even me. The tears I cannot cry, you wipe away. No misunderstanding there. But what I have come to understand is that some days — it makes no difference at all. I hurt anyway. Your song, God, offers no comfort today. The music at times so poignant. Nothing about that seems to matter, when I know you don’t care what I do with my life. Universal truths don’t matter, today, as I sit here thinking about what I now know. What I think I want. Sitting here smothered by the heavy weight of my self doubt. Begging you to help me understand what is happening .
Damn you, fear. Damn you pain that sits lodged inside me. I am choking on it right now. I thought I kicked this habit of despair.
Why do I have to feel my life is so important? Why can’t I surrender to simply living each day. Loving. Others. Quietly. Unknown to the world. Anonymous. Why can’t I just do it. Instead I sit here under the black cloud of the sinkhole and my need stares back at me in the mirror.
I. want. to. be. s.o.m.e.b.o.d.y. I want to be important. I know what I can do. I know my own potential.
But that is what I thought you took from me — God — in my Exodus years. I know you took my heartache and salvaged my soul. Gave me forgiveness and in the sojourn to hell and back you promised to take this hideous ingratitude, ambition and greed. The need for accolades and esteem. That part of me that I loathe, that wants so badly to earn my worth. That thinks I can prove something, anything. Those ghosts of ambition crowd out all that you have taught me through my affliction. Face it.
I want to be immortal. I always want more than you.
It should be enough that you love me. The knowledge that somehow you are rebuilding the frame of this crooked broken heart, that aches and thinks it is something, anything without you. My secrets remain. The fact that some days I don’t want to serve you. I want to be my own deliverance. I want to be God. As if I could.
Damn you, fear. Damn you pain that sits lodged inside me. I am choking on it right now.
This is me melting down.
Logic & Imagination 
Melody, this cuts to my core. My issues are different and unfortunately to the detriment of others, I generally make them public through my writing, but I feel as if your words spoke for me when I was confronted with pain and anguish. Sometimes it feels like a sick, twisted game where God lets me dangle in the wind and to fend for myself–In the end, I know he is always there for me though, as I know you do as well. For me, it’s not so much a test of faith, but instead it leads to a shaping of my character and my heart. It’s a bitter pill that always helps me to get better.
It seems so cliche to say that I’ll be praying for you, but know that I am. Hopefully just writing out the words and sharing the secrets will help you on your journey of feeling peace and believing you are the beautiful one that God called to himself in order for you to know his eternal love and joy. He believes in you, even in your anger, and so do I.
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dave, thank you. your prayers are coveted not cliche! and i am grateful that my words echo the heart of others. i do not feel as alone as i conveyed there, most of the time. just feel the intensity of my own humanity and depravity. again, thank you! every blessing today. mel
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Descending Theology: Christ Human
Such a short voyage for a god,
and you arrived in animal form so as not
to scorch us with your glory.
Your mask was an infant’s head on a limp stalk,
sticky eyes smeared blind,
limbs rendered useless in swaddle.
You came among beasts
as one, came into our care or its lack, came crying
as we all do, because of the human frame
is a crucifix, each skeletos borne a lifetime.
Any wanting soul lain
prostrate on a floor to receive a pouring of sunlight
might–if still enough,
feel your cross buried in the flesh.
One has only to surrender,
you preached, open both arms to the inner,
the ever-present hold,
out-reaching every want. It’s in the form
embedded, love adamant as bone.
In a breath, we can bloom and almost be you.
MARY KARR #iwishiwereasgoodawriterasmarykarr
Sinners Welcome
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We all know artists get highs and lows. I couldn’t write if I didn’t have them.
This is a fantastic article about understanding and caring for people like me, in your life.
http://www.qideas.org/essays/the-little-things-a-meditation-on-the-art-of-encouragement.aspx
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this is more like it …
Psalm 1
Blessed are the man and woman
Who have grown beyond their greed
And have put an end to hatred
And no longer nourish illusions.
But they delight in the way things are
And keep their hearts open, day and night.
They are like trees planted near flowing rivers,
Which bear fruit when they are ready.
Their leaves will not fall or wither.
Everything they do will succeed.
—translation by Stephen Mitchell, from A Book of Psalms, Harper Collins, 1993
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Thank you for sharing your pain. For being vulnerable.
The darkness is real. It is part of your life. But I know and you know that it is not all of your life, that it ebbs and flows.
May it ebb again very soon!
Holding you in my heart tonight.
Meg
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thank you meg. it is interesting to think about this as an ebb. there is hope in the word, though small.
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Honest, raw, real. More real than most of us get to. Don’t most of us wall up that place, the dark place of the soul that can be so overwhelming. Here you have walked right in and ripped open the enclosure. Exposure! Blinding light. The beginning.
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The only way to be, right?
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