You say you're close, but I can't feel your embrace.
You say you delight over me, but I can't see your smile.
You say your love is everlasting, but I don't feel your presence.
If I am too small to reach you, and you won't pick me up, then why wouldn't I feel orphaned, widowed and estranged?
Like a baby in a crib, crying to be held and comforted and loved, whose parents turn their backs and walk away, she knows no comfort.
If what I experience of you is fleeting then how can you expect me to know closeness?
Or intimacy?
Or warmth?
How can you expect me to know love or kindness or hope when there's always something between me and you, or even me and someone else?
Something that cannot be easily breached?
Something few dare attempt to breach or even approach?
Something dark and fierce and cold.
It has a name. Mistrust.
How can I know love or hope or faith if I cannot be touched?
How can I be captivating or beautiful or anything good if I am not pursued? Embraced?
The beautiful ones, the captivating ones, the good ones...they are pursued and embraced.
They are wanted.
Needed.
They belong...
Not I.
I don't really know what that's like.
I don't recognize it.
It is a glamour.
It entices.
It teases.
It promises delight and delivers emptiness.
I know orphaned.
Outcast.
Unseen.
Unheard.
Unknown.
You say, "I love you."
I hear nails screeching down a chalkboard, fraying the senses.
You say, "You are precious to me."
I hear words, words, words wordswordswordsWORDS...
You say, "Trust me."
I say, "Why should I? How can I? I don't know how..."
You say, "Let me show you."
I say, "Go for it..."
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2 comments:
Michelle -
I read this when you first wrote it and have come back to it several times since. It is well written and communicates powerfully. Your writing certainly expresses feelings that I have had better than I could have expressed them myself.
I have two thoughts that may or may not be useful. :-)
1. I think that in times like you describe we need to choose to stand in faith that God loves me completely and is with me always - even when all the evidence I have says otherwise. It seems to me that at some point we all must make the decision to believe what is written in scripture instead of what we see with our eyes and feel with our hearts. Everything in life may be screaming otherwise, but we believe.
2. It is also helpful for me to remember that this whole thing was God's deal anyway. I wasn't looking for HIm. He came and got me. So, too, is being in His presence. I may think I am seeking Him, but the truth is that He has already been seeking me. When we make being in His presence about our works instead of His, we miss seeing the arms of a loving Father reaching out towards us. So, even in our desperate shouting for God, we can recognize His hand drawing us to Him and causing us to long for Him - or else we would not shout.
Thanks, Kevin!
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