Skip to main content

Carry Me

This heaviness. I feel it inside my chest. Like a boulder has taken up residence. It's cozied up and made itself at home.

Crushing the previous tenants. Pushing them out of the way.

It's too big for this space. It's too big to be at home.

Go it must, but until I know it's tender name I have no business, no authority to kindly speak, "you don't belong here."

And yet, perhaps belong it does. Perhaps it's rolled in and made itself at home because it is longing.

Longing to be seen. Longing to be known. Longing to be named and held like a newborn in its mother's arms.

"Oh sweet child. Oh pretty thing. You are home and you are safe."

This heaviness. This thing I feel inside my chest. This part of me that is finally taking up residence. That's decided it is time to get cozy, it's time to call home.

Oh nameless beast, faceless foe.

May I welcome you at last. May I see your beaten face, your battered spirit. May I offer you shelter and rest.

Can I find the courage? Can I trod the tender way?

And how can I do this when I don't know what's before me? What's inside of me?

How can you traverse the unknown and mine the unseen? Who will guide me through these shadows? Who will lead me forth?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reflections

Memories spring before me like a surprise visitor in my window -     t he bird on my sill,           the squirrel up my tree,                the butterfly flitting by. Their moments compiled, one on top of the other -     unforeseeable,          unnoticed,                unexpected. Sarah saw, Hagar looked away, Bartimaeus pled.      Oh give me sight! Eyes that see your truth without protective fear, Eyes that witness miracles in place of death, Eyes clouded by mercy, for the clearest of vision, making me faithful and true. Someday said the bird on my sill.     One day said the squirrel up my tree.          Today said the butterfly flitting by. These memories spring before me like the surprise visitors at my window.

Describe your childhood bedroom using all five senses

The problem lies in which bedroom, as my childhood was filled with arranging and rearranging. Never quite settled, never anything quite totally mine. I suppose my first room was the guest bedroom. Two single beds, first door on the right of the hallway, with the tiniest of walk-in closets, and, of course, the doorway to the attic at its outermost edge. A shared space with nothing that belonged to me except my body and the clothes I stored in my grandparent's spare dressers. The little closet, still full of clothes that hung on my grandparents bodies some days. I would sit in that closet and take in deep breaths. It wasn't that it smelled good or bad, just that it smelled. I didn't think then of it as the smell of the elderly, I thought of it as the smell of home. I wonder now, would I recognize that scent on my grandmother's body today? At night the blank walls lurched with dark, reaching shadows. While daytime frolics with the Ouji board were invigoration, the night he...

What you're thinking about

It's like a wash cycle. Press play and it knows what to do first, the thought that follows, the spin cycle that takes over, and the short calm that exists before it all begins again - the drum never getting emptied. Just an endless rinse and repeat, no change of clothes, no new soap, nothing new at all. It's these same old thoughts, the same old process of attempting to wring them out. To finally cleanse them of their soil and fill the drum with something fresh. Yet it seems like nothing new will ever get added. There will be no opportunity. The laundromat is closed, or indefinitely broken. Relational struggle filled with critique and complaint - all righteous of course - it's what's stuck in the drum now. I desire new thoughts but, somehow, it's always the toxic parts that want the longest wash cycle. Sometimes I open the detergent drawer and add in a heavy dose of bleach, "that'll do it, it should come out clean this time." But it's hard, trying,...