Sometimes I wonder if the places I see behind the screen are even real…
Today I realized there’s something inside me that mourns for what-could’ve-beens, like when my dad could’ve chosen to be a good man, but didn’t. I imagine this amazing person who could’ve taken the world by storm.
Like if one of my uncles on his side could’ve lived and found the hope he had been looking for. I know he did when he was called home, but what about everything he left down here? Or if my mom’s family had loved… anyone, actually.
It is always me thinking about how people could’ve been better than everything they chose or things that happened. Myself at the top of the list, I do worse than falling short most of the time. This is why my choices took a darker turn some years back, for the sight of anyone abiding our world; for the sake of no what-could’ve-beens on my side I jumped, I’m fighting to leave broken down places, the ones long devastated, holding on to Light for dear life while darkness still calls and… now I wait for His hand to hold me every day. He has, even though I still fear the day He won’t. Then I remember He’s steadfast; the Only thing steady in my life, the only good man I know, too. (The Greatest)
Following Him is what changes every what if and eventually fulfills, but none seem to see it. Could you imagine? It is also tiring, sometimes, when you forget it is not you the one who fights… but Him. I’ve figured myself taking the world by storm too, full of light and right by His hand… but here’s what I also figured:
I cannot make you. I couldn’t make them. I cannot make myself.
Be better, do better… and how I struggle holding myself to that exact standard, and behind me everybody else. Yes, it’s tiring. I’m exhausted because after all the fighting, I still hold no answers. I’m no better. I can’t do better. Sometimes I still feel like I’m not better; I still fight myself.
But then there’s Him. He would never make anyone do anything. And that’s on being wanted. Wanting. If we want, we can follow and that’s all, He truly does the rest, which is why He keeps on talking about time. Because time is essential for us, for Him to get through to us and save us, messed up as we are. And the only thing He wants is to be wanted.
Then grief stops. There’s no greater version of anyone than the one searching and running towards the Light, the one not wanting to die. This, is what I pray for those around me, the ones I love;
That they see the Truth in the midst of it all. I wish I could pray it for myself too, because sometimes I wish I was someone else. “I’m so dumb,” I mumble every once in a while looking back at things I do, things that make me look like a child grasping the world always with the wrong hand. There’s a part of me that always finds meaning in everything and I wish I could stop it, erase it, to find rest because it’s always searching… but I’ve seen first handedly what it does to me, shutting it down:
I turn into nothing more than numbness. And everybody knows feeling numb is the wrong place to be. And besides, it is because of this side I feel my own loved ones get tired of, sometimes, that I have hope some days. It’s led me to the only place I know is real.
It’s Saturday… and I’m still wondering.
My garden has been a war zone the whole week but just yesterday in a couple of hours half of it turned back to green and I know there’s something there for me to see… the other half is still black and muddy and no matter how I try not to see it… I see it, it looks like how I feel.
I wish I had taken the world by storm but I used to like taping my feet walking thinking I’d finally get somewhere and I got nowhere past the corner of my street… I cried the first time I went out of the house alone, after four years of being behind closed doors, on what I had thought would be a hopeful walk; the first of many, to many places, alive at last. Free as the world would imagine a healthy freedom. Success. It’s been more than a year since and… I was about to write such a sad sentence, but I just remembered something:
I had coffee yesterday.
Coffee was one of the foods/beverages I avoided because I always ended feeling very sick after drinking it, and with a sore body days after. Today I had a good night’s sleep… and nothing in my body hurts even after the week we had at home. I’m taking no medication, it’s been years. One thing did happen, then, even if it was just the corner of the street I reached, the Healer found me. I believe it was no joke this time, His presence not long ago I tasted.
He found me close, didn’t He? Yesterday I prayed, cried, because how I feel it in myself, the need for someone no to have to care for me, but to want, to care for me. Now I know how wanting-someone-to-want-to feels. But He could’ve said no, when the corner came… and He said yes. And that’s exactly what I cried for years, “If you want to, You can,” so his answer could not have been “I can,” but rather “I want to.”
And this, can make me go on for one more day. Healed to see Him wanting to save me, wanting to care for me…
here, Hope will find me once again, because to live is Christ, yes, and to die is gain… but He has had me live for a long time now, live for Him, I guess, if I just stay and wait for Him. But that’s not the whole of it… no, there’s still something amiss,
Espera en Jerusalén a que venga la promesa.
He’s here.
He carries one through until we lift our heads and look for our enemies and find them no more, the darkness long ago overturned; starting with your own…
I cannot leave the places long devastated, but He promised to restore them years ago.
At night, I asked Him what His promise was, this one He always speaks of. I guess I have my answer now…
To love me, He wants.
Here, Hope will love me,
forevermore.
-SFTS
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