Grief is the wolf white,
Gray, black, who consumes
Your love, and when he’s full
He follows you room to room
Sitting deep in his haunches
With lowered eye
Crouched by the perimeter
Unseen by those standing by
Sometimes his fur is clean,
Sometimes brown, matted down his throat
Sometimes fresh blood darkens teeth
And drools from his grin as gloat
All the time he follows you
No one sees him there
Until you pretend he isn’t real
That you do not watch him stare
You share your empty laughter
Because you have found
There’s safety in numbers,
Safer to have strangers around
Than your intimate wolf.

You know if you allow him,
He will eat you bone by bone
But you cannot know if you will ever again
Stand in any room alone.

Deuteronomy 7:9-10 NASB1995

Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments; but repays those who hate Him to their faces, to destroy them; He will not delay with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face.

Matthew 25:40 NASB1995

The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it Me.”

Deuteronomy 7:12-18, 21, 25 NASB1995

“Then it shall come about, because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them, that the Lord your God will keep with you His covenant and His lovingkindness which He swore to your forefathers. He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock, in the land which He swore to your forefathers to give you. You shall be blessed above all peoples; there will be no male or female barren among you or among your cattle. The Lord will remove from you all sickness; and He will not put on you any of the harmful diseases of Egypt which you have known, but He will lay them on all who hate you. You shall consume all the peoples whom the Lord your God will deliver to you; your eye shall not pity them, nor shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you. “If you should say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I; how can I dispossess them?’ you shall not be afraid of them; you shall well remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt:
You shall not dread them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. . . you shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, or you will be snared by it, for it is an abomination to the Lord your God.

Deuteronomy 7:7-9 NASB1995

“The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments;

2 Corinthians 12:9-11, 19 NASB1995

And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong. I have become foolish; you yourselves compelled me. Actually I should have been commended by you, for in no respect was I inferior to the most eminent apostles, even though I am a nobody.

All this time you have been thinking that we are defending ourselves to you. Actually, it is in the sight of God that we have been speaking in Christ; and all for your upbuilding, beloved.

Acts 16:31 NASB1995

“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

Proverbs 16:3 NASB1995

Commit your works to the LORD And your plans will be established.

Forgive me all my words
Hard flung
Intended to inflict, not inform
Dry up the bitterness I’ve wrung.

Tend to the gangrene
Festering in the bitter, angry,
Stagnant waters of my spirit
Sick as unforgiveness makes me

I’m severed, swollen,
Infected, and sore
Some of it is my own fault;
Maybe a far shot more.

Help me see clearly, to
Sponge away the grief and guile.
Help me to stand again,
To live open-handed while

There’s love to share with starved souls:
Precious because You love them.

Help me see them, and care, and act

And always have my back
Like You always have.

When I had no comforters,
You wrapped Yourself around me.
To You belongs all glory,
Honor, Majesty,

And my forever adoration.

I don’t know anyone I can trust,
Anyone wise- strong enough to stand.
You know what’s just and unjust.
I know I am in Your hand.

I’m trapped. I’m scared.
God, I know You said don’t fear.
So I wait. I throw on You my cares,
I know You are so near

Deliver me.

I believe You
And I trust You.

Because You catch me
When I’m falling
And set me right,

Because You inspire trust
From orphans
Who don’t speak the language.

Because You are
And are always
Working all things

All things
Great and small
Beautiful and horrific

To the good
Of Your beloved
Whom You have called.

Of which
I am humbly one.

Forgive me
There’s an element of reciprocity
After the intentionality
Of my migration to this city

I pushed forward
Through the dense matter of fate,
And it pushed back
With equal force and weight

I purposed to end my earthly roam
I dug in my heels stubbornly
I looked to carve a home
From foreign scenery

I took a shovel and broke ground
The blowback broke me
It knocked me down
Hobbling my knees

If wishing and working could make it so
Perhaps I may have had a chance
To find my way back home
But I did violence to circumstance

And it returned the blow.

I remember, as a girl,
Watching Candleshoe
With my father; He cried.
I haven’t seen either since.

He’s dying.
I wish I could go
Back to that moment
And cry with him.

What I didn’t know yet
All I know now:
There is no one safe.
There is nowhere soft.

There are no guardians.
There are none who tend.
Only people who are hurting,
And the ones who hurt them.

My father swallowed himself.
My husband swallowed me.
The company drank up my love
Ruthlessly, remorselessly

Returning love with hate,
Refusing protection
Breaking my legs
When I most needed them.

And none of these
Were even about me.
I hide inside my own soul
Staring out at the passing days

Like a bus passenger watching out
At the scenery change
A bus that no longer stops;
There are no trusted stations.

My soul is a run-down cabin
That cannot protect from the elements.
In the inner room, I cup cold fingers
Around a small, flickering candle

The last remaining light of my faith
Battered and weak and alone
In the room, I keep silent vigil
To see if the light may outlive the night.

To mourn a thousand passings
To remember a tender thing
To grieve the innocence
Lost under the cold fist

Of arrogance and ambition,
Mercenary piracy,
Gnashing teeth and bony knuckles
The perpetual hunger for more.

The lost language
Of confession, repentance,
Sacrifice:
The core language of love.

I’ve been packing
All these happenings
And the people, too,
But slowly this time
So as not to run off in the night
Though I suppose a goodbye won’t do.

Once I embark
Leaving those stark
Yellow lines that tell no tales
Perhaps distance will heal much
Of the sharp edges time won’t touch:
Mementos of when all failed.

When the sun illuminates my absence
It’ll be like I never happened
They’ll go on as they’ve always gone
But I’m changed completely
They aired every corner of me:
I’m left behind, strewn on the lawn.

It’s hard in life, to do no harm.
At least they’re charmed
To skip conscience and confessions
They were very clear all along
They never did anything wrong,
They need no intercession

So I’ll leave them exactly as I found them
Because heaven knows,
Not everything that lives
Grows.

Last night, work was moving
At a fast clip,
And I was ahead, on top,
With room to spare
But I passed the engine room
With compressors humming there
Like a siren call
I was stalled and stepped
To the frame.
They were abuzz.
The brand name is the same.
I felt my friends beside me
In the world that almost was
Still echoing alongside my reality
Where I can, at times, peek and see
What I would have looked like
Happy.

Whatever I might say of me,
The me that I used to be,
I wanted safety.

HR disagreed.
She wanted me to leave.

It was her place to decide,
So I occasionally say goodbye
To the ghost of could’ve been.

Forgive me my sin
And bitterness.
How we hide our guilt
From our own eyes!
Forgive and cleanse
My Idolatry-
The lust, the flesh,
And the pride of life
I keep and feed
As a carnivorous pet.

Let there be peace
Between God and man.

Immanuel to ransom captive Israel:

God-with-us
Purchasing blood for blood
The Contends-with-God
As His priests of reconciliation.

I am Your bondservant
Direct my steps.