love & loss

You tell me about the stars. 

About how they are dead, burned out, but light years away, 

they are still alive, lighting up the night sky. 

And I don't understand this, but it's okay. 

Sometimes not understanding something adds to its magic.

& I want to tell you that you are all of the stars in my sky. That you light up my darkness. That you scare my fears away.

But I don't. 

It's too soon and I don't trust my mouth not to make a mess of this.

What I also don't tell you is that I love you more than I've ever loved anyone before, that what I feel for you is so strong, so deep, so overwhelming, that it scares me, that it's a feeling I would feel

even if you were

halfway around the world,

light years away.

I will tell you this though.

When love has stopped being a feeling,

when love requires sweat and tears and sacrifice,

when love becomes a choice,

 I will choose you.

Over and over again, even when the light years come and go, 

I will choose you. 

I hope you choose me too.

when heaven touches earth

Some days we feel like the cruelties and evil of this world just become too much to bear,
a hopeless cause,
a place you and I will never be able to change or make a difference in.
You want to turn your face from the tragedies and heartbreak all around you,
because yes,
sometimes living in this fallen world can be exhausting.

But other days,
heaven touches earth
and you can feel your very bones vibrate with the hope that He brings when He comes near.
Near to the mess,
near to the brokenness,
near to the hopelessness.

& on the days when His Kingdom comes close,

so close you want to reach out and touch it,

grab onto it with both hands and never let go,

you will know it more than ever,

that you, dear child,

are living for something more,

something unseen,

something eternal.

hold me right

For so long I've stood,
arms open,
a welcome sign hung around my neck,
welcoming in all who are seeking,
always thinking I must have what they are looking for

but this welcoming in has taken its toll,
this always giving myself away
to people who forget my name after they
have wiped away their last tear
or lifted their head up from my shoulder,
it has left me seeking,
seeking after someone like me

so from now on
I swear I will

wrap these arms around myself, 

I will hold my own body tight,

I will hold this body right. 

royal poetry

The story of us
involves doubt and unbelief,
learning to trust when I (really) don't feel like it,
learning how not to feel powerless in all I can't control,
learning how to find freedom in surrender.

None of my questions have ever fazed You,
nothing I do or say comes as a surprise to You.

You are the only One who can love me this way,
through my highest highs
and lowest lows,
all the same,
without hesitation,
without limits,
sacrificial,
unconditional.

You are the only One who looks at my mess and calls it 'holy',
the only One who calls me 'complete'
as I run to you with scrapes and scars and broken pieces,
the only One who sews me back together when I start tearing at the seams.

Your love is the truest and purest love I've ever known,

Your love is what keeps this universe from falling apart,

Your love is the deepest mystery humanity has ever tried to solve.

Yet,
here I am,
ordinary,
messed up,
broken,

and I am loved by You.

depths

You will never know the depths someone
contains within themselves if you only
splash around in the shallow end.

lessons in blue ink

I've been sitting here for the last two hours
with a pen in my hand
and a blank page in front of me
but somehow tonight,
the words won't come out,
won't arrange themselves
neatly into sentences and metaphors
like they usually do.

The relief of being able to open up my chest
and let it all out won't greet me and I find myself
suffocating in feelings I can't put into words.

I feel like I've woken up on
the wrong side, in the wrong body.
A body whose hands don't know the
way to hold a pen like a lover
and whose mind doesn't look like
the inside of an open notebook,
whose blood isn't spelled 'ink'.

And suddenly I don't know what to do
with myself because now I have nowhere
to escape to, no one to turn to.
No one who understands me the way words do,
no one who offers me shelter the way writing does.

And tonight, all I can think about is
what a tragedy it is when a writer runs out of words.

give me time

Somehow, somewhere, I started listening to the voices,
they got inside my head, bouncing around inside my skull,
screaming loud about things that made me want to
turn and run.

But I quietened them,
told them to sit down
and be patient.

A masterpiece isn't crafted in a day.

So won't you give me time to be a mess?