Lost

"I keep losing people!" I cried.

I wanted it to mean, "Please don't let me lose you now. Please don't let this be one more loss. Please tell me how to make it go away."

Once, silence.

Again, "But what did you really have? What is it, exactly, that you feel you lost?"

And I was wounded by the silence.

And I was angered by the question. What did I lose? What did I lose!

Not just a mother, a father, a friend, a father, a mother, a mother, a friend....

Not just a confidant, a dream, someone to teach me, someone to hold me, someone to love my babies and teach me to love them well...

Not just a place to rest, a place to be allowed, a place to sleep sweet in peace, just once.

Not just dreams, and tears, and hopes, and fears.

Not just days of weeping and years of trying and months of aching and years of crying.

Not just a piano and an embrace.

A heritage and a story, the treasure of a secret.

Wishes, dreams. Effort. Love. Forgiveness. Service. Foolishness. Gifts.

My own pearls, thrown down like treasure to be churned in the bitter mud.

The most sacred things I had to offer, scorned because they looked like weakness and want.

Not a list of happy things. So, I wonder...

What did I lose?

More - if what was lost was never real...how could it hurt so much?

How could something that never really happened, that was not promised and given to me during daylight, hurt so much at night?

How does a dream cause pain to a physical heart, and how does a wish and a thought and an imagination cause real tears, real human tears raining down a human face and swelling human eyes with sorrow?

Sinai's Chance

All I ever really wanted was enough time on your breast.

Long enough close to your heart to stop.

Stop–everything–long enough to feel safe.

I’ve felt closer but not as safe.

Strange, to feel not-so-close and yet safe. Strange,

for my thoughts, for once, to still my heart, for

them to say “Be still. You are loved. You are safe

here. This will not turn against you. This, you can

trust even though you don’t understand and are not sure.”

And for once, my heart listened.

The safety of your nearness turned my heart to Him.

Turning my heart to Him said “Even the worst brokenness

may be healed, even the greatest loss, the nearness

that rejected and wounded and spat…even that may be

healed. Even here, even here, may be the sunlit path

to dreams so bright they remain hidden.”

A tiny circle of vision. Looking at, seeing only the

place where a heart beats strong enough to be broken

by love, within a circle of arms that touches my

hair and does not push or wish me away.

A stirring. A place in my heart that I tried to

put away, mistrusted to go beyond the walls of my

skin, a place that could be my greatest traitor, sending

me to circle Sinai yet again. Or–chastened, wiser

but wild and terrified but reckless–could be met, for once,

in a tiny circle of blue and tan and safety that opens

into the everything of Him.