Lift Up My Eyes

No matter what I tried today, it has come out badly, and now, instead of sleep, I have strange hours. All day, I have done what I did not want to do, always thinking that it was just doing what another wanted, wanting to give up the self for the good of the all. Now, for the first time, I am sleepless in my house again, not who I want to be, failing to please another at the cost of what I know to be true within me.

Can I hear the voice of the other; can I still find what has been lost again and keep the new gains? I can't presume to know the mind of God, but I am going to question the wisdom of one thing over another. I can't keep going with what I don't know, and yet there is no way that I can do anything else. I am back up the tree again and I don't know how to get out without scratching all my skin off, and if not mine then who other's?

I only know what I can know, and what I have known so far has led me in the course allowed to my life. Where else this can go, where, when strong I am shorn and when weak I am abandoned? Where, oh silly God, are you? Your children despise me again, and I am tested near the end of my strength. I know that You will come to my aid if I but utter my cry for help, yet I remain mute as You have asked. I stay away from You, and I don't interfere with Your children in Your name. But these tests have crossed out my name from Your book, and I still don't know what annihilated means. I am still raw and uncovered, still unable to say Your name aloud. My fingers leave the lines untraced, and their love for me goes unfelt. I am a thief again, unable to grow beyond my nature; a player who always plays the card that lets them win.

And I know the voice that leads me to You and I am trying to listen to the stars as they call from their hidden passages. I want to follow You through the skies and be strong. When is my throat going to sing again? When will the sunrise bring me the solace of the light that is You? How am I going to know that the last boat is leaving, Lord? How will I know the difference between my end and what is required of me?

The heat comes from the inside, and it is not strange that it is so. This is the way that it has been and the way that it must be. All I can do is wonder still. All I can do is keep the faith that has sustained me thus far. The questions put in my head, the odd, torn leaf and the faint, cold trail would not be visible to me if You did not mean for me to follow, but I am lost with where this can go! What prey gained, if it were to play out any other way, is the true prize? What unhappiness can be found within the forest of darkness that I am lead upon? Through what distance does the questioning bring relief?

This is the sitting that bleeds me, and yet, sustains my credibility beyond what I am able to express with this voice and these words. This is the tower that keeps falling over and burning with such madness and such grief. How can I open myself again further beyond what has already been taken from me? If You send another emissary, how will I stop from killing again with my small mind in attack and my dropped heart shackled, helpless and alone? How I long to protect and cannot! The oath sworn shown to my face by the tears of my own head!

Grief is the swallow. Grief is the smallest thought that gives the taste to the whole. Grief is the basis for separation and the voice of the preacher whose head is plattered in silver, the cost to be born by the generations marked in Your blood. Grief is waiting in the long harbor as the boat pulls out. Grief is the quiet that deepens across the water calling in the fog of burden. It is what they cannot understand that seems most explained to You, and what I cannot become without the whole of the abandoned lifted without Your hand. I am not asking that we go back to that day. I am not asking that we hide again the knowledge of You, nor bury the brute force of ignorance again in my breast, though I know again that I must go. Grief, for the answer, finally breaks though, and in my vulnerability, You have tricked me again.

I am cold and in the dark, the lamp lay beside me broken and the angry flame asleep. More lay about in the color of the sea, and the jubilant voice of the swimmer is silent just out past the tide. This time there were no takers for the offer of a savior. This time the cries go unheeded and the sleeper continues to dream, and the mark left on the sand has no one who can read it; washes away inch by inch until, yet again, we wake into ourselves as if we were not listening.

Who did I say I was on that day? Who did I long to be when I found that path? How many had to have what they had taken away by me in my greed to know? You have made me a grand and skillful thief to have been there with You, and You knew me and looked at me with such burning and such love! Though I had lived in filth and crept among such vanity, my body craving bodies and filling up with lies. I listened to those who had only themselves in mind and I wanted to be like them. I made myself over and over of the mud. When You found me naked in the copse, hiding like a torn puppy of slaughter, when I heard you coming and I covered myself in the ground, when I saw Your feet and I knew and yet You did not speak, when I broke apart in the dirt and wanted to be less than that, when You turned and I felt You leaving, when I tore up my roots and ran after You, when I got lost in myself again and again and again and You stopped and waited for me, when I knew where to find You and I lay down to sleep.