Today I've been called two things. A spider and a clam.
A spider because I've been resilient, always turning up where I'm not expected to be. I'm not sure about that. Resilient, yes. But I don't know about turning up in unexpected places when I don't even know if I'm in the right one. Sometimes where I am feels wrong, but at the same time it feels right. I don't know. I can't tell anymore.
I'm drifting. I don't know where I'll end up or how. And it's awful because this is the very thing that annoys me about people. How purposeless they are. How lost and wavering they get. I suppose it's God's joke on me. "Let's see how you cope."
But I know where I want to be. I catch glimpses of it sometimes. Then I despair of ever getting there and give up.
Because my tiny little shriveled heart tells me over and over again that I'm not good enough. And I'm too lazy to. And afraid. I'm afraid because I'm not enough and I know it and I don't want to face that truth. So I don't try. I don't want my heart to be broken any more than it already is.
So I hide in my little clam shell and peek out to see if it's safe. Sometimes it is. But most times it's not because I'm in the middle of the ocean and I've been swept out to sea and nothing is safe and familiar anymore.
I cope by making things safe. By going back to the familiar. By trying to cling on to the things I know. But I can't. People change. Things change. And I can't find my footing anymore.
I thought I'd be somewhere by now but I'm still treading the waters of insecurity. Because it's familiar. The pain is a familiar pain; an old friend, an encompassing blanket that shrouds me almost addictively. I love it but I hate it; I need to feel something other than the vast swaths of emptiness, the warring in my heart that says but I don't want to be alone even when it protests in the same breath I desperately need time by myself.
But I've been swept out into the currents by my own volition, by the strange prayers I've found on my lips and I'm clinging desperately to the safety of my little shell by sheer willpower though I know I know I should let go. Because God is this ocean and His Spirit is the pulsing current and in Him I should be safe although I don't feel it and I can't grasp it and I don't know how to swim.
So I sing a little louder to find strength, and offer this hollow shell of my heart in worship because it's all I have right now in the midst of my fears.
May You always be the enough in my lack
May You always be the flow in my ebb
And when I'm far from shore and lost at sea
May Your heart always my safe harbour be
No comments:
Post a Comment