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: seeking God
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 31: The Blue Notebook
The impossibility of ever having anything to say that could conceivably match how beautiful God feels in my heart makes me pause. The sunlight itself is like sweet music from Heaven, light shining like warm love.
James 1:17-18 “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.”
The cross, a greater gift of love then I could ever deserve. Please forgive my sins by your blood and grant me eternal life with you, LORD most high. Cas
Life needs to stay simple if I am to stay sane.
Lord, the white rabbit in my head sits calm and says: You are not late.
I relax, wonderland is just a dream I can leave anytime.
I am not defined by wonderland.
I am not defined by mental illness.
Despite my mental illness, I can connect with God.
I can, I write, I feel. Thank you Lord. Cas
“7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God;
and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us,
and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another,
God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.
14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear:
because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
19 We love him, because he first loved us.”
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 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.”
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.”
Cheryl Reeves Writing - from my shelves of journals 