"Daddy"

“Daddy”

Abba,

You saw how he used

To chase after me

With such delight—

How his face was the sun

And his love a burning furnace.

Father,

You heard my sweet laughter—

Rejoicing with all your being

When my dad

Held me in his arms.

How right that long-lost scene was!

You were so present

In that picture of father and daughter.

Did I outgrow

Such sincere affection?

For now, my beloved Creator,

I cannot watch those old home videos

Without the sharp sting of change and absence

Blazing in my tears.

Why, Abba?

Why does the note always say,

“I love you

–Mom”

And never

“I love you

-Dad.”

Is his God-given light of love

Simply hidden in mazes

Of self-criticism,

Or was it ever really there?

Heal me, Father,

Heal me!

Find some way to reconcile

The groaning pain in my heart

With your sufficient love.

Please,

Show me that you are

My true and ultimate Father!

Show me what it means

To say, “Abba.”

God is Faithful

Faithful

At long last, my Father!

You have heard my incessant cry—

Sweeping away the tears of sorrow

That I carried in my soul

To replace them with the waters

Of pure joy.

I saw my sins—

Once perceived as ever new—

On my savior’s cross

Long-since covered

In Christ’s redemptive blood.

Oh and how I felt

Such weighty grace:

Christ’s knowledge of me

And his consent to endure all hell

For what I am worth to him.

Abba,

My heart—

The decade-old stone of my grief—

Now thrusts forth poetry with your praise

To experience your incomprehensible love

At last, within its pulse!

Yet again

I wept without restraint,

But this time, my exalted Love,

Your presence surrounded me

To create a wholeness

My spirit had never known.

In your embrace

I released those nights of anguished thoughts,

Those hours locked up in the maze of my self-hate,

And all the unmet yearnings for love.

At long last, my Father!

I have grasped your unseen footprints—

Your stealthy endurance

That moved my endangered mind

Past all threats and pain

To see my soul finally comforted.

Praise be to God!

He is powerful,

He is true,

And he loves me.

Another Psalm: 'Job of my Heart' (in the biblical pronunciation)

Job of my Heart

Can I trust you with my heart, God?

I confess I don’t know how.

What would it look like

For me to open up

The all-too essential organ

That so deeply influences

All that I do?

My Father,

I would want to burn my sins

In a purging fire of my own design

But still, they would resist the heat

And stay wickedly unmelted.

If I give them to you

Regardless, I can see them

Haunting me with the guilt of my intentions.

How, Abba—

How will you restore

This vile black pit

That has become a vast marsh?

Can you witness

The cyclical rejection of myself—

Of what you have lovingly created—

Stand before my corrupted psyche

To give me the love and hope

I am dying for?

Oh my Father,

I fall in prostration  

Before your sacred being—

Stretching out like a woman fatally wounded

As she feels her life’s liquid seeping onto icy concrete.

I am reaching towards you, Abba,

But how can I ascend into your peace

If you do not let the Holy Spirit

Gently repair the utter destruction

Of my identity?

I am reaching for you, Father,

I am waiting for you.

My Own Psalm

My Own Psalm

Who are you, Father?

I am now only beginning to see

What wrong my mind has done

To your sacred image.

The dark distance

I place between myself and you

Serves as a testimony

To how little I know you.

How much am I to blame, Abba,

For the mutilation

Of my own thoughts?

I did not choose

To come to exist in such a state

Where, at times, I resent my own life—

Seeing an ugly whore instead of a virgin maid.

Oh my God,

Why am I incapable of tearing myself

Away from the sin that I cling to

Because I do not have enough faith in you?

My head—

This logical machine on my shoulders—

Deeply knows that I cannot change

Unless I trust in you, Father.

Yet the memory of ten year-old me

Will not raise her hands in pure distress to you

In hopes that you will answer her cry

For the bleeding soul in her tortured body.

To face silence,

To face silence again, Father—

I cannot do it.

Will you hear and answer

Your beloved this time:

Shake the foundations

Of my reality until it is yours?

Abba,

Do not leave me alone—

Allowing me to shut my tears up inside my eyes

Like the sacrificial offering I deny you,

My weakness.

My exalted maker,

Give your creation another reason to praise you

And heal me of the black, oozing monsters

That cover up your truth.

From simple dust you made man:

Take the cumbersome rock of my heart

And transform it into a jewel of light

That echoes your glory.

My Father,

King of all the Universe

I am but a feeble human

Compared to your overwhelming power,

And so I beg you—

With all earnestness—

To alleviate me of the heavy burden

That such a pitiful existence as mine

Can no longer bear.

Show me who you are,

Show me your lucid love.

The Soul: a poem

The Soul

The city of my psychology

Is an ambling, rambling place

Where there are many potholes

That—too often—I fall into.

I could give you a tour,

Show you the large library of all the lies I have told myself

Or the mystic pool that holds the shape

Of all my daydreams.

There is also a museum in me:

Half of it stores the beautifully kind words

And happy moments that I wander through

When the darkest night encompasses me.

The other half,

A place where sad thoughts and hurtful instances

Fly at me in the black like bats I cannot see…

Sometimes this inkiness leaks into the brightly-lit hallways of hope

Yet, weakly, I will push the dimness back into its cage.

But, I will confess to you,

There are days where I will sit in that awful room

Letting the nocturnal demons do their worst to me

Because I believe I deserve it.

Lastly, let me bring you to the center of the town.

Here, my friends, is my heart—

It looks lovely, doesn’t it?

The red velvet plush is ever so comforting.

Look again, though.

Walk around to the back of it

And marvel at the grisly, steel enclosure

Fortified by a thousand iron nails,

Guarded by a lock that was only recently discovered.

I’m not quite sure what’s underneath it—

All I know is that it bleeds.

The Possibility and Impossibility of Definition

I envy words: there is a place for each of them in the dictionary where they are definitively defined and one can quickly discover what exactly any given word means. Imagine if there was such a book that held a definition for every single person in existence, then one could simply flip through its many pages to discover the personality of any new acquaintance. Mine might look like this:

Rachel Elizabeth Thompson (Born 10/22/91): A social, talkative, and often dramatic young women. Though she is often quite silly and nonsensical at times, one should not be fooled by her red herring and non-sequitur comments. Rachel prizes intellectual discussion above most other activities, eager to converse about philosophy, history, culture, or any other subject that involves determining significance or understanding mankind. Beyond all things, she is a poet and enthusiastically enjoys both writing and reading poetry: it is her own way of understanding the world and herself. A firm believer in Christ, her heart delights at the opportunity to either encourage or love another person because she appreciates and strives to see the beauty in all people that Christ sees. 

As one might imagine, it would be an impossibly long book. What if when everyone reached a certain age, it was their duty to add their own definition of themself? Making sure to include the aspects of their identity that they long to be recognized, but that people seldom see? There would be both good and bad things about this people dictionary, given that people and their desires change over time. Then again, sometimes man struggles to see himself correctly, and that would be another problem in this imaginary book.

For myself, I can say that there are parts of the above definition that the people around me seem to be aware of or more familiar with than others, and I admit, it frustrates me. Often I feel like the only way I'm perceived is as either the funny/entertaining girl or the loving/caring sweetheart. While it does not bother me at all that most of the people in my life know the latter facet of who I am, the intelligent thinker in me despises the fact that I, awkwardly and sometimes unintentionally, am better known for being thoroughly amusing. It makes me feel so...limited, so boxed in.

I think what I am scared of most is not being recognized for who I am in all my entirety: the various adjectives and important facts that, combined, form the person I am today and aspire to be. I'm not dying to make someone laugh, I'm dying to make someone think about life, the world, and themself through my poetry or even another author's poems (for truthfully, I am only beginning to show signs of maturity as a writer). While I love seeing how a small, humorous observation can brighten an individual's day, I wish people would realize that being funny is really just another way in which I aim to be a positive influence in a person's day.

I am a lover of words, of truth, of pursuing the truth, of justice, of beauty, of love, of hope, of possibility, of art, of Christ, and of people. Though the nature of who I am is not as lofty as a form (i.e. truth), the soul itself is a form that many a philosopher has spent pages and pages trying to grasp, and if who I am composes the nature of my soul, what could make one think that I, or any other person, can be accurately and easily defined?

For truly, even I, in the above definition, have written something that one day may no longer be true, and can only answer the question of who I am with a statement about who I believe I am. The rest is yet to come.

On Potential

The Red Wheel Barrow by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

When, I think of the word potential, the memory of this poem is the first bit of stored information that pushes itself into my conscious thought. When an individual reads this poem, their initial response may be something like, "What?" or "This is stupid", and it is because they fail to realize that what makes William Carlos Williams' poem particularly profound is because he has captured, in very few words, the potential of this wheel barrow. One can imagine it hauling chicken feed, firewood for a long winter, or perhaps mulch for the farmer's garden. In my head, I see this wheel barrow whizzing around on its creaky wheels from task to task across the gravel covered  property of the farmer (who I assume owns it). The poem is so simple, yet so genius (notice each stanza actually looks like a wheel barrow).  I can only wonder what such a poem would look like if it could capture the concept of human potential in a similar way.

As I wonder where the wheel barrow will go until it is broken and no longer able to be used, so too I wonder where I am going, what will happen to me, and how much am I capable of carrying.

Concerning the first question, I know that I am heading towards a bachelors degree in English, but what I'll end up doing with it, I'm not sure. For several months now, I've been pondering the idea of grad school: it would make me undeniably happy to be able to study for a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry, but whether such a wish will become reality is beyond my internal crystal ball.

Isn't it funny, how it seems easier to guess at the larger turns of one's life (such as eventual marriage) then for one to predict the many smaller curves that are capable of changing one's route--and consequently one's desires and needs--entirely? One would think that it would be much simpler for the individual to discern what the outcome of these lighter choices would be, but I suppose the problem is that one cannot foresee what the rest of the world will decide to do and how it will change or not change anything, which answers my question as to why I won't know what outside events will occur in my small sphere of existence.

How much am I capable of carrying? Hmmm...I don't think any single person can answer that question fully until he or she is no longer a part of this world or on his or her deathbed: by then I would assume that a person would be aware of his or her own capacity. But for now, I can answer that question in simple terms. There is a lot that I am currently carrying both psychologically and emotionally, yet I know that even now I am beginning to push my limits as to how much I can deal with internally and still be able to successfully navigate the outside aspect of my existence.

I am learning how to better handle the warring country in my soul day by day; I'm writing more, both in this blog and on a website where the goal is to write 3 pages a day, and it does wonders for me because I am forced to face the upsets and hopes that I hide behind an agenda of pressing needs. You see, that's the problem: when one continues to neglect the most serious matters of the mind (such as constantly feeling like a failure) it creates a back up that is similar to the overly powerful river that breaks through the dam. Once those walls are broken--the precious agenda completely overcome--it is incredibly difficult to restore.

This semester, I want to do a better job at everything: my schoolwork, my time management, my money, how I handle the responsibility of being an adult. I want to be able to look back at my freshman spring semester and be proud of how wisely and well I lived my life for four months. God is embodied within me, which means excellence already exists within my soul. I want to live up to that excellence, to my potential as a child of God.