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: journey to healing
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 30: The Blue Notebook
Most excellent LORD of HOSTS I bow my heart and head and cry out “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY! LORD GOD ALMIGHTY, which was and is and is to come. Holy is your name and you, oh mighty one, are worthy of all praise and honour. Cas
I would lull myself into a trance and therein whisper sweet words of love and conjure such passionate loveliness as to enchant the Alpha and Omega, the great God who is the Beginning and the End and all that was and is to come.
If only I was young and beautiful, I wish that I could dance before you my LORD and ravish your heart with my love. Cas
“Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.”
Revelation 4:8
“And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.”
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 23: The Blue Notebook
I have a theory that the words and love I can offer now in my broken and imperfect humanity are of great value. The offering I make here stands eternal, a testament to my true love for you. So I build up my treasure in Heaven that I may even then have a crown to lay continually at your perfect feet. Teach me, oh Lord to increase your favour.
I beg of you eyesalve so I may see as you would have me see. Cleanse me and purify me and clothe me in white raiment, make me a pleasing offering. I am not lukewarm! I burn for you! I boil! I am steam, and there is fire in my eyes and hair.
Look upon me Oh LORD my GOD and soften your heart towards me. Knock upon my door and I will open all my heart, and life, wide to you. You alone are my heart’s desire and I long to worship you. Cas
“19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Day 19: The Blue Notebook
I take my few coins of sanity and desire to spend them recklessly over and over again. Investing everything I have in the possibility of drawing closer to God. Cas
Dear Heavenly Father, Oh great Jehovah God, in the name of the LORD Jesus Christ my Saviour and by the power of the Indwelling Scared Holy Spirit, I come to you again, writing my words like small birds offered on paper. Each bird flying from my mind to your mind, hear me, oh patient friend, please hear me.
I search for your face among the crowd in my mind. Longing to glimpse your elusive features in the memories that are torn from me by medication and I battle to reclaim. Noble King of kings, how do I find you?
I tear my heart out and offer it bleeding in my hands as an offering.
I would dress in white and wander through ages past and present and into the future calling: “Ahah, Ahah! My love, my LORD! Alas, I am alone. Find me, take me to your home. Save me! Love me! I am your redeemed.” Cas
“Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.”
Cheryl Reeves Writing - from my shelves of journals 