A Prayer
I met Elisabeth after I spoke one night and she immediately opened her journal and read me a poem she wrote. I loved that she so openly and passionatley was trying to put words to her story in her own way. A week later we sat on a park bench one sunny afternoon looking out at the bay in all it’s splendor. She began to share with me her story. She has been through so much and she finds herself in a place with God where He is showing up right in the heart of her dorm room and speaking to her in the midst of her anguish, memories and pain. Everything she wanted to throw out about faith, Jesus has invited her to do just that. And now she writes about her collision with God as HE rewrites His collision with her. – Willow
Now
I lay me down to sleep
I pray
The Lord my soul to keep
Things were constant. Familiar.
One accustomed to the grinning
To the bearing it.
Song and Dance
Bow your head
Bend
your knees
Close your eyes
Were we taught to love?
Nature or Nurture
I wrote my essays in the language of love
I learned that it was all a lie
To learn?
To believe?
He left us seven fold.
Homeless and breathless.
Less Home. Less breath.
I refused to go.
Does a child regret?
8 years
Was I to be surprised?
I feared the chaos. The pandemonium.
Everything was coming together
From sunniness to doom to order
CRASH
A cloth pulled from under the table
Lectured for two hours under the table
Told to be this
Taught of that
All things were made of lies
His throne is built in a house of lies
Did He exist?
No
“Eli, you know you will go to Hell. I don’t want you to go to Hell”
Is it so wrong to doubt? To ask?
I doubted.
I denied.
I still do these. I lie to myself.
But He spoke to me.
In flesh
In person.
In Bellingham. In Washington.
In the USA. In North America. In the world. In the universe.
It was in my time of pain.
He willed me while the whole thing was falling apart.
God’s oath fulfilled.
Now
I pray
