Pain so deep it shreds the heart,
Piercing it with sharp thorns,
Deep, drawing it down,
Holding it down,
Suffocating,
Cannot breathe,
Oppressive
Without hope,
Without dreams,
Dead,
Body, Mind and Spirit
Trying to hold on,
Grasping at the fringes of sanity,
Struggling, fighting,
To retain what good is left
As the darkness begins to swallow me,
I see a shimmer of light,
Elusive, fleeting,
I reach for it,
Always too far,
And the darkness comes closer
I will myself, what is left,
To reach out again,
To conquer the fears that lash out at me,
Like emotional daggers, stabbing at my heart
Ravaging my soul.
The light moves away,
And I fight with my will,
I fight for those that I love,
And that love me,
I fight for my daughter,
I fight for all that is good in this world,
And all that I have not yet experienced.
And in fighting,
I learn to let go,
And the light comes to me.
I touch the light at its center,
And feel its warmth,
Its promise of tomorrows not yet here,
And if not tomorrow,
Then the promise of now.
The struggles of yesterday,
The pain of hurtful words,
Come to me like a flood,
Rising waters, overwhelming
My senses, drowning out all thought and reason.
I feel caught,
Trapped in the middle of two worlds,
One that beckons to me of peace and love,
The other,
All the past pain, hurt and struggle,
And not mine alone, but all living things.
I feel confused,
Not understanding what led me to this place,
To the cliff overlooking the abyss,
As I stand at its edge, I see all around me.
I see the destruction caused by man’s cruel hand,
The arrogance, the hate and insidious lies.
But I also see the love and compassion shared by people,
And the wonder of life in a newborn baby’s eye
I struggled to comprehend,
For isn’t that what a man does?
Rationalization, logic and science,
No room for “just because”.
Then so ever slowly the spirit grew in me,
And I begin to understand,
What lay before me,
Was not the work of man
It was the sum of all life’s experiences,
Good and bad,
Brought to me in a vision,
A message from God
For as I reached for the light,
I could not have known,
That the darkness must be there,
Without it no light is shown
And the scene that lay before me,
As I stood at the abyss,
Was creation flowing through me,
The spirit touching me gently with its kiss
Now when I see the darkness,
I do not fear,
For I know without it,
The light we reach for would not be there
The light will come our way.
Have faith.