No.246: Peace

My spirit is being stretched from all sides — 
clinging to God as I worship the gods I’ve made in my spare time as a wannabe God,
I don’t have peace
because I’ve lost His voice
in the shuffle of noise I call my mind.
I’ll get it back when I move closer,
and actually care to listen,
even if — especially when — what I hear 
exposes my treason, my bleeding, my teething, my fleeing — 
the voices say I’m a runaway.
They say I can’t take a punch to the gut and stay
because I’m too human
to not fight back and win,
so I withdraw, isolate,
find my cave, and close the door,
but what waits for me on the other side may be worse.

I put my hope in Your holy word,
but I think it’s buried somewhere deep in the caverns,
and I hear beasts guarding my light, 
their howls echo through the mountains.
Flight won’t help with this one — 
I am the one place I can’t run from,
and if this is my fight,
I don’t expect to come out alive.
I might lose my smile.
I might lose my way.
I might lose my joy.
But it’ll be okay.
I’m not in here alone.
I got the Creator in my core.
This won’t be the end of me.
This is my rebirth. 
In the depths of my shadows is where I’ll hear the Lord,
it is where I’ll lose my sight,
and learn, instead to entrust my life
to the one who gave it purpose
before the first tick of time.

This is my rebirth. 
My search for a new kind of power:
Peace.

Cover Photo by Edgar Chaparro on Unsplash