Monday, March 2, 2009

[for L.L.] Grace found me anyway…

L.L. I feel like we are kids. Using blogs like little children who should be sleeping, but aren’t. So we write little messages, just so we don’t get caught. These writing prompts are like that.

I feel, as far as grace goes, like it often finds me –in spite of my not looking for it…

Grace found me
Grace found me
When I was busy
Doing something else
Grace found me
When I really
Needed
To be found
Grace
Found me
In a hospital
When 2 children
Were born
Too early
Without
A sound
Grace found me
In a park
When my friends
Left town
Grace finds me
In a room
Designed by new friends
Who show
Grace to me
When I don’t want
To be found
Grace stayed with me
When I crawled
Out the back window
Of my up side down car
Grace stayed with me
When I couldn’t
Get off the floor

I guess
You might say
“When I went searching for grace”
I couldn’t move
So grace came to me
As a man
Who would heal my wounds
But keep his

A story of looking for grace? Again, I wasn’t looking for grace… I was trying to find words. Words, for my sister-in-law. She had just lost twins, they were 18 weeks old. Words… all words seemed to crawl out of my mouth, ashamed of themselves & hide. There were no words. I would later be asked: “how do you feel?” “…the marrow of my bones ache.” My DNA, the particles that made up the atoms that were, essentially me, were crying out “there is something wrong with this world… & I want it fixed…NOW”

“Brian, are you mad at God?” “No… I know God too well to be mad at Him…but not well enough to know what He’s doing.”

But there… in the hospital… Grace swallowed me whole. Sometimes the best thing to say… is to show up. To sit in the darkness together. Wordless. I had told a friend from LW, who kept others, who would pray for us, “in the loop”. As I left, walking the halls of the hospital. I felt I had walked into a “wall of grace” made of water [for some odd reason]. As I walked out, I felt drenched. Drenched by grace. I felt like it was dripping from me… oozing into the cracks in the floor. Silently whispering for it to search out & calm others, as it was doing for me.

I would later read a book by Dan Allender [the Healing Path] where he mentions [to me at least] the single greatest thing one needs when facing such darkness. When we find ourselves “shattered”, into thousands of pieces.

I asked an Audiologist [a scientist who studies sound], “If a tree falls in the forest, & no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”
“No” he replied. “In order for it to make a sound, someone has to hear it.”

This is the one question a heart that is shattering is asking… “did you hear that?”
Grace says “yes, I did.”
Jesus says “I am right here”

May His grace drip from your fingers,

5 comments:

L.L. Barkat said...

I am... just... soaking... this... in.

My soul is whispering, whimpering, sighing at the feet of this piece.

Thank you. Really, thank you.

Bought as is said...

So glad you liked it. It feels good to know you connected with this so deeply. [I am still writing my way into sharing my other color poem]

Laura said...

I too soak it up...if only giving grace could be had this way--me, a sponge absorbing seeping splashes that wash over me every day.

So lovely.

RissaRoo said...

Oh! This is beautiful. So, so beautiful. I will be thinking all day about this poem, and about your words after it...which are poetry all on their own. Wow.

kbarbee said...

i don't know. i clicked over from SCL. this is awesome and i just wanted to say that.