What a year brings...

Some 11+ months ago, I inked this with black Sharpie into my fire-orange journal.
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3.15.05

Now is not the time to try and find someone to fill the holes inside of me.

Even I cannot fill them alone.
Without faith's growth,
nourished by good moisture,
calm reflection
and passionate promise of true meaning,
there is nothing good and truthful.

I can see the light within,
feel it,
taste it,
revel in its purity,
see it glisten ten inches before my bleary eyes.

Hope exists and I'm confident in it...
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Some things change, some forever stay the same :)

I struggle a lot with wanting a savior, yet resenting anyone who tries to take on that role. This poem was my dealing with losing someone I hoped was going to fill that gap, but that need flows over easily to God. Needless to say I pushed Him out for the better part of 25 years, resenting any effort that suggested I couldn't do life on my own.

I want to be whole, fixed, fulfilled. The problem is that it looks different all the time. We can't be completed while we're here. There's always something to work on, strive for and perfect. I think we're not done until our last breath. That's when God stops using us.

Even though I know this - I can't make utter peace with it. I still need to feel whole. I still seek it in others. I'll always seek it in God - and that's not a bad urge. So, the best way I've found to touch some sort of fulfillment is through hoping.

There's always existed a glimmer of hope in my heart that flickered like a dimly lit candle in a dark room. I can always take a bad situation, the way I wasn't redeemed, the broken heart I was nursing, and I can muster up the humility to hope in God.

I'm not completed, I'm not FIXED, BUT the solution is HOPING.

It's hard to accept a savior. To accept help from someone. I'm still working on it. Maybe it's too much for you to do too. But to hope - that's something a desperate man, a blessed woman or someone just existing can do. There's a flicker lit in all of our hearts.

What would a fire look like?

"First, God. God is the subject of life. God is foundational for living. If we don't have a sense of the primacy of God, we will never get it right. Not God at the margins; not God as an option; not God on the weekends. God at center and circumference; God first and last, God, God, God."
-Eugene Patterson

I only hope that my hope can turn into a raging inferno, setting such a fire that I don't even notice I'm broken, unfillfilled and messy....because there's far too much to hope for.