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: mental 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.
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 29: The Blue Notebook
I am weak and lack courage. Please Father God save us from the wrath to come. Extend us grace. Rapture us before the mega storm hits, that even now is brewing in the world.
The clouds against the blue sky make me think of you and long for your return. Cas
Oh blessed indwelling Holy Spirit I open to you every room in my heart. I give you all my keys.
Please let my love for the KING be a sweet scent to His senses. Let the perfume of God’s skin woo my heart. Let His scent drift down from Heaven to me.
If only my longing could inspire equal longing. Oh, to awaken a force greater than my own passion! (A dangerous thought. Perhaps not wise but I long for Him.) Cas
“20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”
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 26: The Blue Notebook
Day after day I will come to you……
I wish I could find a way to pump your own exquisite Holy Spirit into the very ink upon this page. I would that the Great High Priest, the LORD JESUS CHRIST, would personally offer my words to you oh Great JE-HO’-VAH!
“Awake my love! Awake and hear what the Spirit says! What the Son says! She loves You. She loves You with all her broken humanity. Smell the sweet scent of her adoration.” Cas
http://www.youtube.com › watch
The crowds were in the streets that day when Jesus came To town
All the synagogue was there and more from miles around
So I asked him home to dinner just to see what I could See
Of this famous local prophet from here in Galilee
And I don’t know just how that woman got into the room
But you couldn’t miss her gaudy clothes and her strong And sweet perfume.
She went straight to Jesus’ feet and stopped and stood Right there
Then cried and wet His feet with tears and dried them With her hair.
Now of all the women in my town none was more well Known
For the flagrant sin she’d lived in and the wickedness She’d sown.
But He didn’t move to stop her — seemed this phophet Couldn’t tell
That the woman who was touching Him was the kind they Buy and sell.
And I had no idea just what this Jesus planned to do
When he said “Simon, there’s something I need to say to You.”
So I said “Teacher, if it’s on your mind then tell me What you will.”
But as He began to speak to me the room grew quickly Still
He said “Take a good look at this woman now, in spite Of all her fears
She’s kissed me and anointed me and washed my feet with Tears.
She’s honored me and you’ve been only rude to me Instead.
You gave no kiss of greeting, no anointing for my Head.”
And her sins were red as scarlet and now they’re washed Away.
The love and faith she’s shown is all the price she has To pay
For the depth of God’s forgiveness, it’s more than you Can see
And in spite of what you think of her, she’s beautiful To me
Now my anger flamed to hatred, I wanted nothing more
Than to take this prophet by the throat and throw Him Out the door
To act like God, forgiving sins, and then speak so to Me.
This itinerant from Nazareth in backwards Galilee.
But instead I sat and trembled, shaken to the core
The woman still was weeping as she knelt there on the Floor
Jesus turned to her and said, “Your chains have been Released
Your faith has saved you from your sins, rise — walk In peace.”
Your sins were red as scarlet but now they’re washed Away.
The love and faith you’ve shown is all the price you Have to pay
For the depth of God’s forgiveness, it’s deeper than The sea
And no matter what the world may think, you’re Beautiful to me.
Day 25: The Blue Notebook
I try to see myself as a woman before you. I am 39 but it’s hard. I would offer you my heart that still feels young. My young heart laughing and full of art and colour, a sparkling fountain of endless possibility and frighteningly submissive tendencies.
I would kneel before you. I would sit at your feet. I worship you. I long as no one but a woman, truly, desperately in love can long. Be not far from me but incline your ear to me Lord, I beg you. Cas
If you were a loin, I would be a lioness. If you hear me roar in the night, come to me. Cas
“9 O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth.
10 Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth: the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved: he shall judge the people righteously.
11 Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof.”
Cheryl Reeves Writing - from my shelves of journals 