Handle With Care

I was thinking about the points I made in my last post about what I want to focus on for Lent this year. This is what happened. I guess I needed it. As my much more eloquent friend, Virginia, put it:

"Though I already know my weaknesses, writing them down makes them more concrete and real."

Her post is beautifully honest and it inspired me to finally write down some of the things I can't bring myself to say or acknowledge most of the time. I guess I was due for a poem. It's not the best piece of poetry ever written. It isn't cleaned up or carefully crafted. It's just what was in my head. I hope you don't mind my sharing.

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Handle with Care

Love is patient and love is kind 

and I try to look like love to everyone I meet,

but if love keeps no record of wrongs then

I don't see that love in me.

I despise myself for being weak.

I despise myself for every fault.

I despise myself for the things that I've done.

I despise myself most for feeling this way at all.

Friends console me and tell me it's not true.

It's just something that every creature works out.

But ears that can't hear love certainly won't hear the truth.

And while I struggle against my ropes, I drive the stakes further into the ground.

More often than not, I refer instead, 

with a nod, to the crosses I bear and

the marks they have left - like a rubber stamp

on my heart that reads: HANDLE WITH CARE.

I am begging for the grace that I so easily give away

but I forgive myself half as often as I fail.

Please, come break me and draw out the poison.

Remind me that hate is a veil.

I need You to remake me and re-create me

and teach me to love what I should,

so that when I behold your creation I can look on it

and say, at last, "It is good."