Tag Archives: Fear

Deliver Me to Purpose

Jeremiah 15:19

Psalm 138

Author and Finisher

Deliver My Words
From faithless futility.
Take captive my thoughts
Beyond my ability.

You have regarded me closely,
Not from afar, like You regard
The haughty of spirit;
You stay near when it’s hard.

You told me in my youth
Extract the precious words
And discard the worthless
But I treated as equal all I heard.

I live in the lies and can’t be drawn out
If I cannot treat them as garbage,
Which is what they are:
A message of carnage.

I struggle to forgive
When I can’t lift my head
To see the greater truths
That dispel my dread.

Don’t give up until I’m clean.
I know how much it hurts,
How angrily I scream at You
I do everything in bursts-

I forgive, I stand, I bite, I cry,
I fall lost in my own snare
Free me Father, don’t let me die
Give me wisdom to get from here to there

Unfettered and able
To serve You unencumbered.
Multiply the days
I have foolishly squandered

Even knowing they were numbered.


God,

All this way, for what?
No one cares.

You keep reminding me to love,
To be kind, not to define man
Where I have no jurisdiction,
And I will do what I can

But God,

Be kind to me.
The wait is long.
The people were treacherous.
The disappointments throng

And seem cemented.

No one cared,
Now I’m not sure I do either.
I took my way
When we were dating
He spoke Your name
Looked close enough
But didn’t really obey
In the ways he didn’t want to
I knew it was common to man
So I hoped

I wouldn’t pay the consequence of sin.

Your Sin Will Find You.
Always.

We began by doing it our way
And rendering You lip service
Asking You to bless
Our presumption
And the meager ante
The gesture
We gave You instead of obedience
Instead of laying down our desires
And seeking You first

I’ve payed for it since.

No one should care.

What would caring look like?
Like You holding me back
From the final death
By betrayal?

I suppose, like Your men
Your earthbound friends,
I expected an earthbound answer
To an eternal, spiritual question.

Deferred Hope
There’s nowhere to turn
Ever in this life
But left or right
Farther into You
Or into destruction.

I read Your promises
And I couldn’t imagine
That kind of joy
Worth it all

But my time frame was off.
I was thinking
As one stride follows another,
As a pendulum swings
In turn
I have to alter my hope
Adjust my scope
Survive and search
The skyline

For the final resolution
Learn
To suffer in silence
Like a lamb before slaughter
Who is so very quiet.

Try to look like You
To the people who tear You apart
And rejoice
To share in Your sufferings

Which I can do
When I truly believe
I’m sharing with You.

The pain and betrayal,
The cold indifference of onlookers
The sustained injustice
Mockery and derision
From the very people
In charge of putting it right

Put me wrong.

But that was Your cross
Where You bore their sin
As they wrote it
In the carnal delights
Of Your misery.

You forgave them in it;
Help me look like You
To the ones who tear You apart

Forgive me
When I know not what I do.
Help me bear up

Until I cross over to rest in You,
Then remember me
When I wash up on the shore
Of Your kingdom
My Tender King.

I believe You still.


Night Moves

I curled up to rest in confidence,
In a feeling of accomplishment
A day where everyone excelled-
My insecurities quelled
But the night crept in
Indelicately stepped in
Scratching where I slept
With terror, in a tragic overstep
And it moved me to waking,
To trembling, to quaking,
To mistaking what’s proved
With what the night moves.


Fear

Fear is the beast that ever gnaws
A gaping, jagged throat
Churning and swallowing,
In salivating gloat

Over the next meal.


Winter Whisper

I was your secret
while the sun blazed
I could keep it
while your crazed hatred

still burned.

I was your secret,
through each new season
I refused to speak it
Fear finding new reasons to

stifle myself.

I told your secret
here in the cold,
where the wind repeats it
to no one, and the old

world is dead.

I told your secret,
and some small child
inside me sneaks
to see if the wild sun

can burn here,

or if I’m as safe
as your secret has been.


Me ‘n Matthew

I’ve succumbed to this infirmity,
Like spiritual leprosy,
Slipping beneath the pallor,
Aching in my joints:
It only hurts where I bend.
And I’m numb again,
My nerve-endings fall mute
But I have called to You

And You are willing.

I hold my breath.
Still on my bed, like stone death
And my fears crush my feet,
Clinging like gasoline and smoke
Paralyzed under the weight
Tormented by what I can’t escape
And I can’t get up, get away,
I can’t crawl to You,

But You will come; You will speak.

Tossed in feverish apparitions,
Bound by my inhibitions
Fueled with burning skin
And thought and imagination,
What is true, objective reality,
And what is birthed inside me
In the flame and misery
Of these spiritual infirmities?

But I believe You’re able:
Touch these hands
Set this fever to flee
So I can stand, so I can see

So I can serve Yours as You’ve saved me.

8


Strike Anywhere

This under-the-bushel life:
This hush-or-you’ll be seen,
Silent in the strife,
Lucid in the dream,
Choking-out-the-light life

When I should let it burn.

This habit I’ve worn,
These lies I’ve swallowed
Hiding what’s torn,
Filling what’s hollowed
By grief or scorn

With whatever can’t burn,

I keep the wick trimmed
Waiting for an invitation,
But when beckoned, I dim
In reckless hesitation
And sin

Because the light burns

But these dark nights
Call my name
And if light gives sight,
Bring on the flame
It’s time to ignite

My resistance and my purpose
To see what burns,

And what remains.


Dammed

I was born into the flow,
The water from my mother’s womb
Rushed forth, followed by the tune
Of all the words I know.

And this river is always pounding
The banks of who I am,
Destroying any dam
Diminishing it’s expanding and expounding

By the time you came along
To a waterline risen
I was completely given
To the current’s song

And you supported me with one word,
But belittled me with the next,
So I read your subtext
And remained unheard

Eleven more years, the waters kept rising,
As we grew into each other,
You were comfortable with the smother,
And I’m skilled at compromising

But the waterline rose all the same
So you adjusted the box you keep me in,
I’m careful where I seep when
I walk around in your name.

Until the day we broke and
All of you entangled
In my flow, suddenly strangled
And forced me unspoken

But we worked our way back again,
I left my words on the stagnant floor
Growing up, heading inshore,
To walk in the land of men

And I’ve barely written since
The tide dried, words don’t persist,
But we still talk like they exist
In the present tense.

Yesterday I called it my work, to hear you say
“If it’s work, you need a new hobby,”
Somehow, it embodied
These years I’ve underplayed

I didn’t wince, or shirk,
I stood erect to face you
To speak my breakthrough
“It’s work; it’s my life’s work.”

All at once, I could see
How simple, how true,
And it doesn’t belong to you
And it doesn’t belong to me

I’m dammed
But it isn’t your fault
I’ve kept sealed my vault
I’ve held this ocean in my hand

Raging in my pen
All my life, I never called it by name
I looked for someone to blame
For the fear I live in

I made you my moon,
Giving you power over the sway
Of in and out, the tidal play
Where my words commune

But these words need the sun
Gold on shimmering waves
Daylight saves
And night should be overrun

But if I succeed,
Whatever success entails,
Or if I fail
The work I achieved

Is my legacy.


Oh Father,

I silenced myself
I shut up my mouth, my pen,
Because of the sorrow in my soul
I feared the sin in my heart

I stopped proclaiming

You freed me to speak
The stagnant pool of death
The bitterness of my bones
Rotting my flesh from inside

But You have brought my fear to point

You have goaded me to fear You,
Healing my decaying flesh
With obedience in humility
Bringing refreshment to my bones

And I honor You

With this body of death
That You alone make alive
I lean on You to loose my tongue
To praises as You guide me

My King Eternal


A Patch Made in Heaven

It’s raining self-despair outside,
And the clatter on my roof
Of water-damaged words
Sings aloud its sharpened proof
Cracks along the heights of me
Allowing rain passage through

It’s dripping all around me,
And the patter of the sound
Reminds me how I leak,
How I’m at risk to drown,
But I know the roof I lost
Can still, again, be found

So I pray He takes His able hands,
And wraps them around my soul,
To protect me from the coming flood,
To plug up all my holes,
As He has done, time and again,
When rain exacts its toll.