Reflections on a Year

You cannot file away the past
as neatly as you once did.
Things crawl out of the drawers,
like characters in a Tim Burton movie,
creatures in the night, twisted
and flawed and strangely beautiful.

You are both more fragile, and stronger
than you ever imagined.
More broken, yet closer to completion,
closer to who you were meant to be,
able to take far more of a beating
than you ever imagined,

Your God has a sense of humor,
and is quite skilled
at twists and turns and keeping the reader
hanging on for dear life as he throws you in the air
without a visible net below you.

Mourning will not kill you,
though it comes again and again and yet again,
stripping you of the things that once held you close,
once held you up, and leaves your ground
earthquake unsteady. Somehow, you survive.

Love is harder, and more wonderful than you remember.
Children, friends, family, lovers are the spring in your life,
worth nourishing, emerging like crocus from under the snow,
reminding you of beauty in the moments
when you feel most blind.

Disciple, once your enemy, has become your savoir,
has dragged you out of bed day after day,
kept you at the work, forced you to push past
the dark places in your life, forced you to not just survive
but to grasp the joy. It has allowed you to dance.

Color! Passion! Music! Once things you were afraid of,
now things you crave like an alcoholic.
You dance alone in the night. You paint wildly,
released from the monochrome place you lived so long,
You have become brighter even as the wind blows hard at your candle.

Fear lives. You do not pretend otherwise.
Hurt lives. Failure lives. Struggle lives.
You do not pretend otherwise, and there is courage in that,
Valor. Power in not pretending to have answers you do not,
power in your imperfect vulnerability.

This is unexpected. That it is OK to be weak,
that weakness is part of our human condition.
It draws us together. It allows God to work
far more efficiently than any pretense of perfection.
It is a secret strength, too often untapped.

Living with less, you have found, has brought you more.
something still not understood,
that paradox of finding more in less,
No longer seduced by the need to fill your life
with the unnecessary that only distracts you
from the essential. .

You understand so little.
but you seek, and for now, that is enough.
You have become more comfortable with fog,
more willing to flounder, trusting
that the world is kinder than you once imagined,
even if recent evidence points to the contrary.

You find, as you sip the last drop of coffee,
it’s bitter taste lingering on your tongue,
that you are less unique than you believe,
less alone than you believed, more loved
and more worthy of love, and far more alive
than you have a right to be. Gratitude rises,
a fire inside that warms you, propels you, and lights you
from within.

About this poem

Simply some thoughts on the year past. Not all of them by any stretch. It’s has been a year of pain and learning. of being stretched and growing. One of the worst years, but then, those are often the years that prepare us for the best to come.

Happy new year my readers and friends. You are loved.

Tom