Clarity
I feel as though a fog has lifted. But it was a heavy fog, filled with the comfort of uncertainty. For what I didn't know I could imagine existed just beyond the perimeter of cloudiness. And in a sense, it drove me on. It made the cloud seem bearable; at times. It's like looking up at the sky and seeing anything you wanted to in the clouds, and imagining it was formed that way for you alone.
So now I see the fog, floating above me like a low rain cloud, and I almost wish for it to return. For now I CAN see, and what I see discourages me. I see stumps of trees. And when I look closely at the trees I see pictures of people--carved into the tree-rings--now long dead, and although I don't know their names, my heart goes out to them, because I knew they were dear to me. I see burnt villages, the fire licking through the wind like the tongue of a serpent. And as it cracks, it moans and laughs, because it knows this torments me. I see beautiful windy fields, and want to run in them. But if I run I trip over the bones of little animals scattered about like someone's trash.
I look in the sky and I see storm. The cloud that once held me 'safe' is but a speck in a growing torrent of natural fury. I see trees far off getting tossed in the air like toy soldiers, and somehow it makes me happy to know that trees still exist, if only beyond the horizon.
Yet I see light. And this light, though smaller than all that my cloud of uncertainty now appears to be, pierces into like the arrow shot true. And I feel myself open up, yet I don't care. The light crawls through me like water that has found a crack in a dam, forcing out anything in its path. It is taking the hurt, the pain, the memory of tree stumps, the wicked laugh of the c(r)ackling fire, the hurricane. It all disappears. For the light transcends all. What is this incredible light that it would do this so to me?
You alone, Lord, are my light. You will pierce me. You will tear me apart and make me whole. For he who is not first broken cannot be made whole again. Take this broken body, and mend it. Take my dreams, and give them wings. Take this heart, and hold it as precious gold. Protect me from myself. For at times, and it seems this way now, I feel like my own worst enemy. I build castles, only to cry when I cannot beat them down. I build bridges and cannot cross them, because im not confident in my craft. You build the bridges God; you build the castle that I will dwell in. And then I will be safe, for there is no greater architect than you, Lord. None greater.
Amen.