a page ahead; a page behind

_________

farewell, old friend

how well

how long you’ve served—

how far

we’ve come.

how dear my con-

fidant—

my quiet place.

how long

you’ve bourne

the weight of all my soul—

upon your spine.

and though

you bore me long

never a grudge—

never a word

a touch

or a mistrust.

how very long

i’ve hidden

in your lines—

how well

how long

you brought me comfort there.

farewell, old friend,

the closest I have known.

farewell old friend.

how far

i’ve still

to go.

___________

Today I said goodbye to the old friend that has carried me shakily through the last seven months of my life. I don't dabble in free-verse very much. Mostly because I am never, ever happy with the result. But today I made an exception to those rules.

Saying goodbye to this journal is like saying goodbye to a mirror that looks back over the last seven months of my life. Seven months of change, of learning and growing. I've cried into it (actually). I've grinned recounting stories, remembering the people that I've grown to love in the process of living. 

It is much heavier than when I started. The weight of dirt and ink and scotch tape and leaves and memories, all held together in that miraculous little Christmas Present. It has survived rain and snow and being dropped from a tree (over a frozen river). It was even flicked through by a massive dust-storm, once—I had to blow off every page.

Scraps of poetry. Notes for books written (and not). Songs. Letters from my beautiful sister. Notes and quotes and days spent with amazing friends. Human beings worth spending a life with. Prayers. More than anything, the sort of prayer that comes from the chest, that comes from a moment split open. A journal mapping the course of my (lack of) devotion.

Looking through it all now is like looking through days and moments of ache and hurt—growing pains. 

It is me. Seven months of me, reflected on paper. Not perfectly, not accurately always. But truthfully.

Words are my medicine. My cure. And my curse. And if they've taught me anything, it is to tell the truth. 

The voice in my head and I get along better now, than we used to. Sometimes we’re even friendly. We’re tired together now, and we’re understanding. I’m not sure I can say any of that about the version of myself I knew, those few months ago.

Putting this on a shelf now is the strangest sensation. Cracking over the sister, and setting down a pen on something blank—both unique, both exciting and terrifying.

A physical expression, I suppose, of letting go and moving forward.

Something I’m famously bad at. I am not quite parallel; but my Lord is faithful. 

And I’m getting better.

Slowly, and wrapped in leather, I’m getting better.

Of Scars and Stories (The Cathedral: A Reprise)

Of Scars and Stories 

(The Cathedral: A Reprise) 

People with scars are the most beautiful things in the world. Without them, we are like an eye that has never shed a tear, or a tongue that has never bathed in laughter. A night sky, without a single star.

Scars represent struggles. They reveal something deep and real and beautiful, even though we cringe, and feel our stomachs turn at the sight of them. Struggles are stories. And stories are life.

Not all scars are visible. Some of them linger, just under the surface, or some deep down, where light has never touched. But all people have scars.

They are proof of life past and life to come. Road-markers. Reminders. Like day-dreams and dog-eared pages. Scars are our way of saying “I’ve made it this far. (And maybe I can make it a little farther, yet.)”

The truth is that we are all jars of clay. Earthen bones, vessels pulled from the ground, more breakable than glass and cheap as dirt. We are easily broken, body and soul. And like clay jars, whenever we are cracked or chipped or outright shattered, what hides inside us is revealed.

And like the things of dust that we are, we weren’t made for shelf life, either—we expire much too quickly for that. We weren’t made for mint condition—we gave that up the moment we took our first breath.

We were made for trenches. We were made to be broken open, and prove what is inside us. Made to rocket through the world like a penny, collecting grime and fingerprints from a thousand places, and to be rattled clean at the end. We ricochet like bullets, in our little, orbiting lives, racing from one moment to the next with hardly time for pause.

Scars are stories. Stories are scars.

Stories written in skin and soul and etched in the sinews of the heart. We are scars on the skin of this hurtling sphere, living scars, histories and memories and salt.

So roll up your sleeves, or pull off your shirt. Tear off your mask, and show me all of the grime and the claw-marks on your face, from when you were close enough to feel the devil's breath. Get rid of anything that hides you. Show me your scars and I will show you mine. Show me the signs that tell where you’ve been, and a glimpse of your tattered heart, so I can see where you’re going. Pin them to your chest like medals, badges of weakness, signs not of what storms you survived, but of what your faithful captain has brought you through. 

Show me your scars, and tell me your stories. I’ll show you mine, like He showed me His. Mine gruesome and gaping and rotten, the holes left behind by chains, peeled, tugged and pried from my flesh.

His only three—made by nails, and a spear. And yet, His scars and mine share the same story.

The Story of a God who spoke a universe, who forged every moment and watched every one of them poisoned. A God who suffered every ounce of pain he witnessed, who watched his bride kidnapped and ravaged and who did not remain idle. A God who entered this world through a woman to relieve the curse of all mankind. A universal God, who folded himself into a child, and grew to break the curse.

He died to prove His infinite love—and he rose again to prove His infinite power.

God was poured out, into a clay jar of its own. A shallow, breakable body, cracking in the cold and baking in the sun. He who spoke the earth into being and drew life from its emptiness, humbled to fill that which he drew from the ground, spinning on this temporal potter’s-wheel. When that jar was splintered, the light spilled out; all the light of heaven, the light of truth and goodness. It lit up the universe, with a story. A struggle, between light and dark, that was over.

And that glow was poured out, into all of those fragile vessels called to His service, to burn inside them.  Vessels of clay, full of heaven’s treasure. With every crack, we release the light that we contain, until we shine like lamps in the darkness. With every scar, with every hurt, every hardship, we prove not the light of what is in us. But who is in us. 

Every time we are broken, body and soul, we become not something more whole—but something more wholly His. Something a little more like the treasure entrusted to us.  

We are vessels of clay, sculpted to tell stories. Made to be scarred. Made to point to something all our lives, and to keep on pointing, at their end. For through our scars, our struggles, our stories, we reveal something more about the healer, the overcomer, and the storyteller.

And the truth is that my story and His have the same character. And it sure isn’t me.

My scars speak of Him. Because His scars speak of me.