Walk the Line is a poem I wrote after watching a movie about Johnny Cash and thinking about how the journey of life walks into the unknown and the unexpected.
Life, some say, is about growth.
The much-heralded power of
Deep self-understanding and genuine reflection.
This growth we think we know.
Because we think it comes in wide sweeping changes
Meant to clear our decks.
Desperate as we are to believe
In giant steps and giddy decisions.
Big changes that deflect and overshadow
Real reasons and root causes.
Like a blister during a foot race we pray to ignore.
Let my giant steps carry me to the finish line.
Then I will have time to look and tend to my pain.
Instead
I say that personal change comes
In small, miniscule steps.
In the nuance of a heart beat.
In the slight tremble of recognition.
Yet still,
We want to discredit the possibility of little changes
Because these changes, when we tune in, do not feel so small.
What we have been trying to ignore is not just tiny or implausible.
It is ragged, and it is raw,
Oozing with the poison of disappointment and the stench of fear ignored.
The grand change allows a place to hide while
The small change opens the wound where it can no longer be denied.
Hear me as I cry.
Make me not to tend the field I thought I had already plowed.
Do not require clear vision and the sobs that choke my eyes.
Let me, please, go quietly into the night of big decisions.
My wound is too ragged, and my heart is near broke.
Lord, hold me.
Let me float away.
I can not go there.
Let me stay.
But here is uncomfortable.
Painful, in fact.
Particularly once I merely failed the attempt
To acknowledge my ragged and my raw.
Hurt will not linger where there is no welcome.
It must have been me that nailed the welcome mat to the floor.
So, drag the nails from the floor.
And toss the mat out the door.
Linger no longer.
Pain, hurt – out my door!
Hear me gasp.
Hear me cry.
Hear me wonder if I also threw God away.
I will not linger.
I will face my ragged and find it within me to heal my raw.
I make my choices.
I write my story.
One teeny step forward as I try,
For the first time,
Hear me:
Pain will not rule me, fear will not keep me.
Hear me, Lord as I make the tiny change,
As I tend my wound here and now
In the middle of my journey.
I let the race slide away and
Reach within the ragged edges,
Letting my heart heal my pain.
Breathe in and feel my power,
Let my breath out wipe away my pain.
Whole, yet sometimes wounded,
I stand ready to meet the pain of change
Again.
To find my books, begin with my Amazon Author Page.
