Who condemns you?
Go in peace.

The stones have been hurled,
By venomous tongues in quiet places
How heavy they have landed
Condemnations graceless-
I was innocent in my engagement.
I just wanted to know and be known.
I wanted a little mousehole
I could call my own; I could call home.
The arrogant lovers-of-self
Publicly stripped me bare
Disproportionate to my crime.
Vanity of vanities, they only cared
For their own reflections.
What a fool I have been!
How I believed the good in men’s hearts
Would never stand such treacherous sin!
I must have been too high maintenance.
How relieved everyone becomes
To expel me from their presence
Unfit for family, I follow the crumbs from
Days to weeks to months

In circles,

But there’s no going home
Because I don’t have one
I never did.

I miss our home.
I miss feeling secure
In my husband’s love,
Staying indoors
In our warm little nest
With our little brood
Holding them for hours,
Preparing warm food
For our warm souls.
I loved our little family.

How will I ever grieve it away?

How will the loneliness
Ever die on its own?
Can it die alone?

I am still broken, Father.
Please remember Your maidservant.

I know I’m looking at this all wrong.
I keep trying to forgive
As mind over matter
But the grief I’ve lived
Exacts blood, and I cry out.

I sensed the narcissism, the rage,
I sensed the treasury
Of self-satisfied pride,
But I never sensed the treachery,
Or the reliance on unjust gain.

But I don’t want them destroyed:
I pray You dismantle the dysfunction.
Purify them of their idols.
Rebuild them for a higher unction
Than self-aggrandizement at cost.

Help me remember when the pain swells,
And the anger shakes my fist
That I survived
And You redeem the twists
Of Fate’s chains.

Thank You
For establishing the work of my hands,
In a place of provision and fairness
Where I need not buckle under demands
Far out of their jurisdiction.

Purify me of the loves I shouldn’t hold.
Help me to move forward and fully let go.
When people show me they don’t care
Help me to see; help me to know
Like the fig tree that refuses to bear.

Thank You for those in my life now
Who value me in surprising ways.
Help me be a blessing to them,
As I used to pray every day
At Wellness.

Protect me from the folly of my affections.
Lead me in wisdom and discretion.
Help me leave them to You,
And not look back in my procession
Like Lot’s wife did.

Give me the strength for the work ahead,
And the needed endurance and skills
I will keep endeavoring to make my hands strong,
Continue to deal with me from Your gracious will,

Jesus, my most gentle and generous Savior.

The people here saw everything,
They heard it all, they covertly knew
My deepest wounds and suffering
And the only thing they chose to do
Was withhold justice for nepotism,
And abandon me to my plight
In isolation, knowing the weight I bear
They engage in their delights
Apathetic to the destruction
They both wrought and condoned
If You ask, I forgive them
But I beg You, make it known
What they have done,
Confront them with their sin.
Let them repent in sackcloth and ash
Topple the towers they pride themselves in
They’re foreigners to kindness.
It’s equally brutal to silently view
A soul get exsanguinated-
They don’t care, but I believe You do.

It hurts because I loved, I trusted,
And I must never do that again.
Because it’s also hatred in a soul
To watch a wolf devour a lamb,

And feel like a better person for just watching.

“Far be it from You to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?””
Genesis 18:25

A funny thing happened tonight
On my way into the shop,
I couldn’t take another step
Where I walked, I stopped
And stared at Your sunset
Lighting the clouds
And screamed silently in my soul,
But made no noise aloud.
I considered death,
But knew I was trapped.
I stood still and stared.
People overlapped.
Then they starting looking up
And talking to me
About the evening color
Being a beauty.
Younger ones,
Cameras held high,
Started taking pictures
Of the pinked sky
The fingernail moon
Winking back
Softened splendor
Soon to ebb black.
So many stopping in wonder
They had no way to know
I was only stalled in the street
Because there was no way to go.

I’m struggling
To file away what happened
To understand
How to process
Wellness.

All the extremes
In coexistence
Bonded by a sense of superiority
In juvenile resistance:
Bullies.

Children playing
King of the hill
Merry in their game
Erupting at will
If they lost any ground.

Always withholding,
Derisive, and distant-
Did I love them
Because they didn’t?
They wouldn’t?

Or was it because
Inside their lawlessness
A kind of rogues’ code
Formed a flawless mess
Of to-the-death loyalty

For the thieves and tyrants
Born inside the guild,
The ones grandfathered in
Did I love that they all killed,
To-the-man, to protect themselves?

Or was I Wendy
In love with the Lost Boys,
Hoping to nurture
In comfort and joy
Adulthood from adolescence?

Was it for the
Angels of their better natures
The gold ore inside the vein
The humanity hidden in vapors
Between their masquerade?

Or did I love them
For the presence of things uncertain?
For the concealed, selfless kindness
Of the one behind the curtain?

The gentle patter of loving rain
On a hot tin roof.

proverbs 27:5

I cannot say why
Or what good it could possibly do,
But I miss his face
The world is nothing new
And everyone feels
Like repeating vibrations
In measurable spectrums
But he radiates in isolation
Some kind of unique pulse
Outside of the white noise
Of common parameters
If I had a choice
If I had a chance
If I had anything of worth
To proffer or promote
To share the earth
Beneath each other’s feet
It would be my gravity
To be his blessing

But I am woefully insufficient
To hold such a masterpiece.

I remember, as a young girl,
Lying under a dark cloud
Sensing the swarming evil
Teeming in a death shroud
Vacuous, malevolent,
Ruthlessly cold and proud

I repeated “I belong to God”
Until it dispersed
But the hatred I felt was
Undiluted and worse
Than anger- pale, remorseless,
Gnashing curses.

Tonight, in a moment alone,
Someone who never yells,
Erupted at me violently
Kicking over a stool that fell
And skittered away between us.
Some part of me could tell

It was more than an unusual moment.
There was an old force at play.
The one who has hated me
From my first birthday
Who wanted me dead in the womb
And to cut short my stay

Scratching with borrowed fingernails
And a hunger to devour me
Whenever I am exposed
Within the power of their teeth
I could feel the surge, the attempt,
And I can now see

People don’t know what comes over them
When they get alone around me
Because it’s the same ancient evil
That has always found me.
It isn’t fully them.
It is a case, profoundly,

Of wrestling not with flesh and blood,
But powers resistant to God’s will.
I recognized the thing quickly tonight,
And it didn’t fulfill its desire to kill
But after all these decades
It hates me still.

Not because of anything about me, but because of who’s above me.
Not because of anything I am, but because the True God loves me.

The song began
And my soul returned
To cold stones
And lone grief, spurned
By all, by my closest,
But not by You
Lost to all,
And the only things in view:
A bleak shoreline of death,
Isolation, betrayal, rejection-
The utter loss that leaves
No room for correction,
Just experience.
Exiled, I died out there.
I hid my soul among the stones
Too alone to care
About a Christian burial.
Still, You wouldn’t let go,
So I didn’t cross over.
Now I know
The pit goes deeper,
But so does Your grace.
There was no one to reach for me
Down into my burial place.
If it weren’t for You
I would have died completely alone:
That’s all I’ve ever had, or meant,
Worse now that I’ve grown
Beyond the blush of youth
Where no one winces at my attack
But You held me as I died,
And You brought me back.

If I’m being honest,
I miss the mornings aloft:
Roof walks and coffee black
And laughter. I miss being soft.
I miss loving from my depths.
I miss being able to be me,
I miss the mirage of connection;
But I invoke cruelty
In my natural state
In greater imbalanced ratios
Than I inspire kindness
Or allegiance or hope.
So I’ll continue to ossify and obscure
My old attitudes
While in this foreign land
I’ll remember with gratitude
You parting the waters
And leading me through.
Whatever happens,
Let them all know it was You.

Let them know how much I’m Yours.

Eyes that can’t see.
Ears that can’t hear.
These are the frustrations
Of a God who draws near-
I think He speaks
In what we see as incidence,
Repeating patterns,
Symmetry, coincidence-
His language permeates all,
Every moving mite of matter:
Light, sound, the fluidity of time
Is His divine chatter.

Father, give me eyes to see,
Ears to hear,
To step where You step,
To stay ever near.