Behind Me

Back to the place I started from
It's always you
Always comes back to you

Forgiveness is given
To free myself from a control
That you do not deserve

Dig inside for a lyric or two
An emotional expression
Of what this is without you

Stare straight through me
I'll walk right by
Ignore the pieces we tip toe around

This will slip away
Just like it always does
Simple technicalities

[2007]

Beautifully Broken Together

My habits are not the cleanest. Sometimes I cuss, sometimes I drink and smoke and party too hard. My past is a colorful collage of foolish mistakes. I'm a typical girl. I get moody, emotional, restless, prissy, fussy and picky. I will come out swinging, ready for a fight. Sometimes I'm super shy and overly quiet; so much at times it seems I'm a snob. Or I'm loud and obnoxious, seemingly arrogant and confident. It's all just a cover for my many insecurities. I get angry when I'm hurt and am almost always first to point the finger, mostly to divert attention away from myself. If I'm happy, you'll know it. If I'm sad, you'll see it. When I'm scared, I become stoic and you'll think it's a mystery, how to figure me out. My mind is complicated, my heart even more. Every day I learn something new about myself. My expectations are far too high, for myself and for you. I don't have much discipline. I can be lazy and apathetic.

Yet, I have hope that my life has not been wasted. The mistakes, the screw ups, the many times I have fallen have taught me valuable lessons; ones I try to pass on to anyone who can relate. My experiences have molded me into who I am; they have made me stronger. I fight with passion, but I love with more. I am slowly learning to be me, without the facades, without the images that I think you want to see. I haven't always felt so free, but I'm getting there. I love it when someone knows me well enough to call me out on my own stubborn stupidity. I've come to realize that if I can be me and that's ok, then you can be you and we can be beautifully broken together. I need someone to push me; someone who believes in all that I am and can be; someone who won't quit on me, no matter how lame I am.

Let me warn you: I will have bad days. I will make you mad. I will hurt you unknowingly and not understand. I will push you to be everything you are capable of being. I will believe in you to no end. I will love you for all that you are and all that you are not. I will laugh with you. I will cry with you. And I will most definitely fight with you. If you think you can handle me, you are probably wrong. But as long as you're okay with that, then so am I. At the end of the day, I want no more than you do… to be loved at my worst.

Relapse

All for love, all for not

Don't wait now, don't wait too long

Come out swinging

I'm ready for a fight

Don't stare at me like that

Like somehow it's my fault

You leave me stranded

Out here on my own

Fragile complications of lies and deception

We pass back and forth like disease

Change of plans is all you say

Hand him the keys and walk away

Ask it like you know

Like some how you deserve

The music, it blares, so loud I couldn't hear

Hear myself screaming for you

But I see it now, see you so clearly

For who you are and will never be

Intention has turned to bitter pretense

I could never be happy here

In this castle of glamorous façade

I lose myself within these masked walls

Shallow insecurities rise

An ever strengthening defense

To shield what never became

Reoccurring rhythms reflect as splintered mirrors

To remind ourselves of what not to do

Return to broken

It's who we are

Voice

Life is full of lessons learned. Sometimes they shatter your world and tragically turn things around, leaving you running in a direction you never intended. Sometimes they return the smile to a face that has felt nothing but tears. And sometimes, the lessons just leave you numb and disillusioned. I think we most often get stuck in those lessons; not really wanting to learn them but having begun the journey that won't allow us to turn back.

Eventually, our lessons turn into stories, told in brilliant colors as painted on the canvas of our souls. I love the times I get to paint it myself; the times I get to write the script and edit the final draft. I dread the times I am left helpless in the audience to watch the storyline of my life be drawn out by a stranger; rough drafts of who I am, torn apart and rewritten in an altogether different tone, not my voice at all.

They say difficulties produce perseverance. I say it just produces brokenness and it's in that brokenness that we learn to live, or maybe just survive for a time. Where is the hope for a generation who is told to believe in a God who has the power to take away our brokenness and yet chooses not to? Shallow words are often all that is offered to such an assembly.

I have no formulaic solution, no standard response to give. But I can offer an experience, my experience, of a relationship with someone who has given up his deity to share in our brokenness and through such now offers us his wholeness. Make no mistake, this experience will not take away the pain that comes from living in a fallen world. It will not save you from the harsh realities of living in relation to fallible beings. It will not shield you from lonely nights of tearful sleep; but it will give you a reason to continue in the morning.

It is a beautiful thing when God himself takes over the script of our lives, picks up the paintbrush and molds together all of the broken pieces of who we are; molding us into each other and into himself. It is through Christ that we are made whole, made complete; not by our doing, but by the artistic hand of God, painting a mosaic of all that is his creation. And we are healed.

Waking Up

Moonlight rays

Crash through an open window

Shattering images that graze my mind

In the deepest of slumber

 

Photographs of your face

Engraved inside

The depth of your touch

Bound within

 

Shaken, shallow breaths

In a moment that stands

Eternally still

Expanding in the sadness

 

That which can only be found

Solicited exclusively

In the art of a single glance

A soul exposed

 

What is desired

Found so far in distance

Yet so close as one's very own

Heartbeat

 

Entangled we are

As sun rays chase away

The memories of us

Into a solitary line of literary prose