Sometimes you need someone to give you a gentle shake. Just a few words of encouragement can go a long way. My friend Sandra gave me that this week and I am so grateful. Here are two poems I wrote a few weeks ago. I don’t feel like a ‘good’ Christian. I feel very flawed and lost in the fog of medication but there are small moments of clarity. It is God who is ‘good’ not me, it is by grace we are saved, not works. I hope these poems might be a blessing.
Tag: faith
Taking one more step by faith
Today it was a challenge to record these poems. I haven’t been sleeping well, my mind seems to think going to bed is the signal to start planning out how to change the world or take on a new career or renovate my childhood home and turn it into a retreat. Wonderful thoughts to contemplate but not helpful when you need to go to sleep. Thank you for taking the time to share my journey, we are all imperfect works in progress, how precious is it that our God loves us just as we are.
The Journey Continues
This week has been a series of panic attacks. I have been really struggling and spent all day yesterday in my pyjamas refusing to to face reality or behave like an adult. I had my first appointment with a new psychologist on Friday. She was lovely but the stress of going over my history and diagnosis is profound. Anyway I have picked three poems to share and I hope they might be a blessing to you. Listening to them read back to me by me, is strangely moving. I know how much heartache and desperate searching and deep gut wrenching pain is behind these simple earnest words. I hope they will be a blessing to someone.
A New Poem
Daring To Share
I have been trying to get the courage up to actually record one or two of my poems and post them. I find people connect with what I am trying to express so much more when they hear it rather then just reading it. It feels like a a scary leap of faith but I got brave enough this morning, with my mum’s encouragement, to record these two poems I wrote recently. The move to a new house and the fact that I am having to see a new psychologist and psychiatrist are all things that are playing on my mind. I run to God and throw myself into his arms once again.
The Prayer of a Medicated Soul
By Cheryl Reeves 14-9-2022
Oh Lord my God
When I just try to focus
How thick the fog
That makes my windows white.
I cannot see,
Or hear you voice
Inside me.
I am so lost,
I beg you
Melt this frost.
And lift me up
From broken couches hiding,
Give me the strength
To let myself cry.
Let me with honest
Eyes wide open,
See who I am
And feel the pain I feel.
Let me be one,
As you are with your Son.
That all my parts
Share with me one heart.
Forgive me Lord
For tangents and for hiding
In endless woods
Of social media.
I long to change
To grow and be alive.
Able to move
To walk and not to fall.
To be the woman
I know that I could be.
Lord, come closer
And clear the fog for me.
How do I love you
As I would?
How do I eat and sleep
As I should?
Am I alive
To follow my own path?
Or am I here
To learn to love You true?
Day 27: The Blue Notebook
It’s a compulsion to come. Perhaps it is insanity, but it’s more real and beautiful than all the world. Cas
I am a deer panting after the living water; please quench my thirst. Cas
Lord, is all my religious fervour a symptom of my mental illness? Do I matter to you? Do you read my prayers?
Heavenly Father, find me. Please find me in the night time of my soul and hold me in your arms. Reassure me that there is hope and I am not alone.
A little faith is all I have. Forgive my impatience, please. Cas
“Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”
Day 17: The Blue Notebook
Adonai, I would make you a perfume of my own heart. I would turn it velvet, rose, rubies and musk. I would ground my own soul, burnt with fire, to make some sweet ash. The aromatic incense I would offer before your throne and with it a new song, all my love in the sweetest melodies.
Please accept my offering and draw me closer into your secret, hidden, soul, deep inside your infinite loveliness and vast perfection. Cas
She went to God in her secret heart, And shared with God her secret parts. She drew her bow and shot secret darts And longed to pierce God’s secret heart. When God she found, she fell in fear, For God is frightening if you come too near. Instead of arrows he uses a spear And he pierced her heart through her soul full clear.
“Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense;
and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”
Day 15: The Blue Notebook
It is as though the world is a popcorn kernel in an ever heating pan of oil and any day now, pop! The signs are so plentiful it’s overwhelming. Please hold my frightened heart in your mighty hand Lord. Cas
There’s terrible emptiness inside me. When I feel you very close, it is filled. I long to have it filled all the time.
Why do I still feel the need to seek if I have found? Why is my heart still knocking if you have opened to me, Lord?
Why am I still asking, if I am truly receiving, all the fulness that is my portion? If I am, please increase my portion.
I seek to besiege the very heart of God. Oh, mighty God of all, I love you. Cas
“My flesh and my heart faileth: [but] God [is] the strength of my heart,
and my portion for ever.”
Day 10: The Blue Notebook
Yesterday I had a time of feeling so close to God. It felt like I was laying in His arms, safe from all the universe and time and space itself. It was the most beautiful moment since I have been on medication. I know I need to be careful and live in the ordinary now and relax and stay mentally well.
I shall keep listening to the Bible and praying and seeking and trying to be patient and content. To love God calmly is a challenge. I keep pushing: running like it’s a desperate sprint to the finish line, a fierce competition to win the hand of the King.
“Only one life to offer, Jesus my Lord and King. Only one heart to offer and of his praises sing.”
Will I be able to continue to write you letters in Heaven Lord? Will I still be able to have a personal, one on one, intimate relationship with you? I worry I will be lost in the crowd and never alone with you again. I would sacrifice all of Heaven to be alone with you awhile. It is you I love, not the safety or pleasure of the rescue. Yes, I long for the Rapture, but I long for you more.
Please at least let me have pen and paper so I may continue to write long love letters to you until after the tribulation and Christ’s return. Then maybe in the 1000 year millennium reign if you have time we could meet up for coffee? Cas
Cheryl Reeves Writing - from my shelves of journals 