Alright, Enough!

I was reading my homework tonight - which lines up very neatly with everything else that God has been telling me literally through writing - and I realized that I've been fighting a losing battle here simply because I've been fighting with my head down.  How can someone possibly fight when they're not facing what is attacking them?  So, I have had enough!  Every time it seems that something really amazing is happening in my life - like the new job God graciously provided - I am instantly besieged without even having time to delight in the last victory!  And then I feel like all I have to say to people that I care about and deeply respect is to request prayer for the crappy stuff and then feel guilty for always being gloomy and not having more encouraging things to say.  Enough is enough, I am putting my foot down!  As my aunt is always quoting, 'Greater is He that is in me than he who is in the world.' and she is SO RIGHT!  So it's time I start believing it and acting like it!  If satan wants a battle, I am going to bring the battle to him instead of waiting for his inevitable attacks!  And it's not going to be with my head down in a complete lack of confidence which is ridiculously easy to defeat, it's going to be with my head held high in confidence for the One who goes into battle before me!  I am an adamant believer in spiritual warfare and that it is not emphasized nearly enough in the modern church and yet I seem to have such difficulty to combat it in my own personal life.  So, enough is enough!  I'm tired of being held back in defeat by my own lousy insecurities and weaknesses!  And no more whining to my friends, even when things are tough!  They have problems enough of their own and don't need to hear about more.  Who wants to hear someone whine all the time anyway?!  They deserve a lot better than that, and so do I.

I just thought I better get that out in writing, both so that I can fully retain what I've just said and so that there is a written record of it!

Over-freaking-whelmed

My stomach feels like it has been pummeled to jelly

By fear, by pressure, by stress over time

My mind feels both numb and humming with suppressed activity

Overworked my mind with far too many insistent things

Urgent matters that cannot wait

All urgent

All immediate

All things that only I can attend to

All clamoring at once for my attention

And I, only one, cannot corral so great a stampede

I am trampled by my own over-active mind

By too many responsibilities that are too great to ignore

And me, being only one, am drowning in the onslaught

Overwhelmed by life and its vast, great sea I constantly struggle to stay afloat

It does cross through my tattered brain that an exhausted mind,

With its battered and bleeding soul in tow,

May perish in chains

In screams and much battering of padded walls

 

And no one to call to account for this overwhelming tidy but

 

Of course

 

Myself... *sigh*

 

 

 



Warrior's Repose

(finishing later tonight)

 

Rolling smoke across this field where battle so recently fought

The ground scarred and torn as the lifeless soldiers that lay

So many autumn leaves in the cold February of their day

Locked in the long winter that came far, far too soon

 

 Who weeps for these in their souls, a part of them weeps alone

For grief cannot share its most personal and poignant power.

Different is her face for every mourning soul

Yet the same staring gaze of despair.

Shock melts into hurt, hurt into anger into tears into... more hurt

And over and over the cycle returning

The fall leaves once again flipping end over end in the long winter's icy breath

 

(will work on later tonight)



'Till The Thunder Sounds No More'

Author's Note: When I was a little girl, exactly 2 months and 4 days before my 5th birthday, the axis to my world crumbled and an amazingly Godly man named Ronald 'Ronnie' Rosenberry passed from this earth and into the arm's of God.  I called him 'Daddy'.  The months before his passing, I alone of my 3 siblings was young enough to be around the house for the duration of his battle with cancer.  I saw him suffer and I longed to bring him comfort and to relieve the pain I saw in his eyes when he looked at me and was tormented by the knowledge that me and my sister and brother would be growing up without him.  I remember going to the grocery store with my mother as she was forced to pick out what she felt to be the most 'tasty' looking baby-food for him to eat because with the food tube in his throat due to the esophogial cancer he could no longer eat solid or even ground-up food.  I remember asking him one day towards the end as I had so many times before, 'Daddy, will you read to me?'  He could not answer me through emotion.  You see, at this point, he was so weak that he could barely talk and certainly didn't have the energy to read me a story any longer.  My mother had to try and explain to me that daddy couldn't read to me that day because he was too sick.  She kindly offered to read for me in his stead, but I declined.  It was kind of her to offer, but it just wouldn't have been the same.

In that last year or so of his life, before he grew so weak he could no longer read to us, he liked to sit at the piano and play and sing.  I don't remember what his voice sounded like, 31 years has dimmed that particular memory into a yellowed photograph too dim to discern.  But my mother says while he could hold a tune, he had a little too much vibrato in his voice to make it truly pretty - which she has said very lovingly.  Like many things in his life, I believe it was his gentle, Christ-filled spirit that made it beautiful.  I do, however, remember that one of the songs he sang during that time was a song by an old gospel singer/song-writer named Mosie Lister. http://www.popularhymns.com/till_the_storm_passes_by.php called 'Till The Storm Passes By'.  Throughout my life riding the many hills, turns, loops, and spins of its roller-coaster ride, I have never forgotten that song or how, shortly after my dad's passing, my older brother (11 yrs. old at the time)sang the song in church in our father's memory.  (My brother, incidentally, has grown into a man much like my father was before him.  He's got a huge heart, he's incredibly compassionate, He loves the Lord, is patient and protective with his children, and he loves to sing.  So do I, for that matter.) Perhaps because of the very strong association the song has with my father and the emotions that link that to a father's love, protection, and even sorrow for his children, there are points in my life where I still listen to this song to feel the comfort it brings.  Sometimes, after a very difficult day or frame of time, it is a song that I hear replaying in my mind like a lullaby until I finally fall asleep.  Last night was one such night... (won't tell the weekend's story here)

Till The Storm Passes By

 

In the dark of the midnight,
Have I oft hid my face;
While the storm howls above me,
And there's no hiding place;
'Mid the crash of the thunder,
Precious Lord, hear my cry;
"Keep me safe 'til the storm passes by."

'Til the storm passes over,
'Til the thunder sounds no more;
'Til the clouds roll forever from the sky,
Hold me fast, let me stand,
In the hollow of Thy hand;
Keep me safe 'til the storm passes by.

Many times Satan whispers,
"There is no need to try;
For there's no end of sorrow,
There's no hope by and by";
But I know Thou art with me,
And tomorrow I'll rise;
Where the storms never darken the skies.

'Til the storm passes over,
'Til the thunder sounds no more;
'Til the clouds roll forever from the sky,
Hold me fast, let me stand,
In the hollow of Thy hand;
Keep me safe 'til the storm passes by.

When the long night has ended,
And the storms come no more,
Let me stand in Thy presence.
On that bright, peaceful shore.
In that land where the tempest
Never comes, Lord may I
Dwell with Thee when the storm passes by.

'Til the storm passes over,
'Til the thunder sounds no more;
'Til the clouds roll forever from the sky,
Hold me fast, let me stand,
In the hollow of Thy hand;
Keep me safe 'til the storm passes by.

Hold me fast, Let me stand,
In the hollow of Thy hand;
Keep me safe 'til the storm passes by.

'Til the storm passes by.