Friday, January 14, 2005

Ducks and Rows

I sit here again to write this at too early an hour, yet for the first time in months I feel peaceful enough to allow my mind some time off its leash. Most of its confinement, my mind, has been due to a single misconception regarding growing up: it all needs to be sorted out now, whatever it is meant to be. And that's just the problem. It is not meant to be anything--there is no standard for becoming an adult, no one way that our days are ruled by, nothing other than living in relationship with our Maker. The weeks leading up to this realisation have cost me sleepless nights and chest pains. What a shame that this is another lesson learned a second time.

As I approached graduation only a short time ago, I was able to spot this lie for what it was and reject it after sleepless nights then, too. But that was when there wasn't anything at stake. Since marriage, and all its trimmings, is around the corner everything is at stake. My very life. My space, plans, dreams, hopes, and ego. And I'm willing to cast them upon the One who can take them. The One who gave them in the first place (other than the ego, anyway), either for a season or a lifetime--that is up to Him to decide. And because of that sovereignty, even giving them back to me one day is a possibility. I find comfort in that. And if He chooses to never give them to me again, the dreams especially, I trust that He'll fill me with new ones more appropriate to who He made me to be. Easily said. Good night.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

A Sonnet

All this is flashy rehtoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love--a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.
--C.S. Lewis

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