Calling

The memory of your voice

Is like rushing down a hill

down

down

Down into the very depths of the earth

That I grew from

To dust

From dust

I am dust

I am spirit

I am Patricia

And you called me Patricia.

When you said the most beautiful part of me

Your sound made Patricia

I laughed I cried

I was

I was not

Patricia rose from dust into herself

I have no words for such a phenomenon

to describe how you create a soul

You see it and it is

You speak it and it is

You say Patricia.

Here I am.

Tangled Walls

She smiles with eyes that are hollow and dark

I peer into the deep, eternal canyon

There is hunger that scares me

I'm afraid of her fear
And muted opinions and
Time ticks by

She chuckles 

Quietly wiping the crumbs from her mouth

With one small sweep of the napkin

Her subtly trembling hands

With eyes void of crackling warmth

Obey a quieter voice that speaks nothing

Let me in, let me in!

Tangled walls from her mind maze

Stand irrationally firm

As I push with my power

To bring peace and salvation

To the dying child

Who silently waits to become no more

Her posture is straightened

Her quick comments are practiced

She waits and speaks without error

Dancing and prancing and laughing

Between all my questions

She avoids an unknown terror

And I wonder

What lives in the depth of her eyes?

Oh to explore that dark wonderland,

A private territory space!

But there's no path, no door

What resides in the warren?

Stay away, stay away

She yells from her hallowed ground!

Summoning last amounts of strength

As I approach

She can’t afford to be unsure

Her heart is her own.

A fiery night

He screams
He shrieks
He punches
He kicks
He claws
He crawls

He is an angel
He is a demon
He is a creature
He is my son

How does one mother an animal
Whose only instinct is to hunt, run, or hide
From terrors that are unclear

It cannot be reasoned with
It will not allow rescuing
It will not hear blessings, only curses
Whose body was built to endure fire and torment

Crossing into his world
Can only stab my chest
As I watch my once-newborn
Mercilessly devoured by searing flames
Under a cruel ruler's order
The beast has had his fill

His mouth drips with the blood of my children
My heart turns to stone as I desire one thing
His punishment

God give him the justice that he deserves
Train him to stop feasting on innocence
And consuming the little hope in my son
That I have toiled for

Breathwork

A breath
In
Pause
Out

In
Heartbeat
Out

Another thought
In

Out
Emptiness

Can't keep
In

Going like this
Out

To lift my body with energy
In
Needs less air
Out

To believe that things will get better
In
Needs more
Out

Maybe I should let Him
In
breathe for me
Out

On Fierce Reality

Another day to look at reality
in its fiercest form
A devouring lion
A relentless hail that pounds
across my already bruised face.

Fresh, raw, and crazy
Sanity runs quicker than I
Cannot keep up
Cannot reach beyond my already outstretched fingers
to briefly at moments glance her strands
of hazy hair

Reality,
the strongest dream that I awoke from
If only I could control that phantom
which only appears in the darkness
to do my bidding
instead of depending upon it for my very life

Hope can disappoint
Dreams are by nature, fleeting
They roar and crave
Ever consuming and never satisfied
Mercilessness in it's cruelest form
like reality.

Oh let me be awake and this nightmare depart!

Wedding reminiscence

Today was like any other day. I woke up and started working on my internal to-do list as soon as I finished my coffee. Eat breakfast, take meds, work on songwriting, do chores. I quickly ran out of things to do at 11:30 a.m. Then, my eyes wandered over to my bookshelf where my wedding journal was. I delightfully seized the baby blue book and began eagerly flipping through its contents.

About halfway through, as usual, I started gazing at blank pages regretfully, the ones that I had not bothered to fill. It then dawned on me that I could use my empty schedule to finish filling out my journal. I started writing down details inside the book, and found the hours passing by as I recalled all that I could remember of our wedding day.

Most of the things that I remembered were mishaps and dramatic moments that had plagued me while I was trying not to be stressed. It's interesting to observe what we remember most about events. Someone reading my journal would probably be misinformed, concluding that our entire day was one disaster after another. I also remembered, however, those moments of infinite joy. I mentally recalled the moment I rounded the corner and made eye contact with my grinning and teary-eyed fiancé; sitting silently next to him, anticipating the moment when we would say our vows; and our first dance when everything blurred but his face and we could have been dancing alone for all I cared.

Most days I want to get married again; to relive the happiness I felt on my wedding day each and every day that I am alive. Some people may claim that we should feel that way every day. It's the same with God on the spiritual level. Some people say that we should be infinitely happy every day with Him and never have sorrow or anything else but joy. They say that God just wants us to be happy. My response to that is that if we were that euphoric all the time, would we do anything other than worship? If I was going ga-ga for my husband every moment of every day, would I ever learn to love him? Could I ever know what true sacrifice felt like? Probably not, because it would just come naturally to me.

Where am I going with this? Anyone who has been married for a while would agree that marriage is tough. It's a commitment that lasts a lifetime. I'm not saying my wedding day was fake though, because all days have their appropriate flavor in the meal of life if you know what I mean. I'm saying that our wedding was a beautiful day and I am thankful now that I do not have a wedding every day.  I'm glad today that when my husband comes home, I will once again feel the pain of having to let go of my selfishness and love a little. It's in those moments, in my baby steps away from pampering myself, that I slowly change and become more like God. After all, God is love.

Catching Up

Hello everyone out there who is reading this blog. It's been a while and I wanted to thank you for following me. It has been a few years since I last wrote anything, but I don't want this blog just to die and be dependent on Google searches to be unearthed. Therefore, I'm changing the role of this site to becoming somewhat of a temporary diary. I am not really a wonderful writer or communicator, and as much as I enjoyed writing this blog, I have run out of steam writing about the Bible.

Don't get me wrong! I still love Jesus! I just have much to say, many stories to tell, and a lot of free time this summer, so I am going to attempt to chronicle my days as they happen (with no daily commitment) from here on out. Not just, "this happened, this happened", but honest-to-God thoughts that I have had about life.

Today, I saw a movie called "Hello, my name is Doris" which is about a woman in her 60's or later that crushes on a 20-something man at work. It's quite awkward to watch and I do not recommend it, but it gave me some food for thought. It made me think about how long I am going to be "young". Do you ever think about that? Do you ever wonder when you're going to start getting wrinkles and start being overlooked by the world? Or do you think about what is it like to be old and forgotten and alone?

Proverbs 31 talks about beauty and how foolish it is to get caught up in it. It says, "Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." I feel like that is easy to say, but difficult to apply. After I thought about this verse, I stared in the mirror and wondered what my face would look like 50 years from now. I looked at my youthful cheeks and neck, rosy from walking around the house, and pinched them as if to make sure that they were there to stay. Youth feels so permanent, yet I know I'm just like a flower blooming in the springtime, naive to the winter in store. The cold is coming...

And then Ecclesiastes 12:1 says, "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, "I find no pleasure in them." Isn't that dark? I wonder if I am in "the days of my youth" or the "days of trouble." It certainly already feels like I'm in my days of trouble, but perhaps there's more in store.

I don't know what the purpose of this blog is for, or what exactly I'm going for right now. It's rather mirroring my life to be honest. My purpose seems hazier than it did 10 years ago, a trend that I am hoping to discontinue. Do you ever feel like your mission is lost? Like somehow in the waiting room of life, you were forgotten? What do you do in those times to find it again? I feel like I have no mission. Every day that slips through my fingers seems to be dripping with regret and my heart burns with a desire to find direction.

Perhaps I'm afraid to make a wrong choice; to choose a path that leads to a place that I cannot leave. I'm realizing more and more that the choices we make day-to-day alter our life course significantly. The direction that I decide on is going to lead to specific opportunities that I may not have had otherwise. It could also limit me and lead me down a dark path.
So those are my thoughts for today.