Here's a poem I just wrote about my life and testimony. It's a bit long but if you feel led to, please read. I suppose I will name it "He Came for Me."
Enduring has been the food of my youth…
Trouncing down victory and solidity my only good choice.
Clawing and pulling myself to get to God and His promises is what it’s felt like.
A push here, a shove there,
I stand, I wait, I press,
I am reduced and broken down
Over and over again
Blindfolded with the only choice to take faith’s hand
I was born into worldly privilege that’s cost
sought to claim my soul
Out of the womb and into heated battle
I was thrust into a war not of my own making
My once new eyes like a deer’s in the headlights
Innocent and unassuming of the road I would have to walk
To just. get. free. became my only desire in this life
To scrap, to fight, to overcome, to take back rights that seemed to have never been given to me in the first place.
I was stolen from before I had a chance to possess anything.
My worldly advantages were a mirage,
A cruel joke
A phantasm
While ones around me insulted and jeered
Why can’t she just get her life together?
They couldn’t see the bridge-less chasm that lay before me.
Because from the beginning torment stalked me.
Living from terror to terror
I cried out to my Mother and Father “I’m scared”
But it seemed no one could really hear me, though they tried.
No one could see the silent gaping reason,
The mystery behind my life’s dilemma, save from God.
I had been given over to shattering,
And shattered I became.
Shards of broken dreams and
Personality scattered to the wind
Why was the enemy allowed to win? I’d think
Why was I accursed?
When you don’t know who you are,
You won’t know what to do
And life will ever elude you
I once had no solid dreams to hold
No goals for which to strive
Because all I wanted was to hide and escape
The pain that had become my very life.
My heart bled out night and day as I pretended to lead my life
Just waiting for a chance to lose what was left of me to anyone who would stay
No matter how dark and depraved was the “love” they gave
I didn’t care about myself
I didn’t even know who that was.
All I knew was scared and lost and bitter and alone.
Unmotivated save for scavenging scraps of temporal good feeling.
To feel anything safe, good, and comforting
Even if it meant hiding away and forfeiting all,
I would sell my inheritance for a chance to not have to choose anything
Because living meant caring and caring meant loving myself
Something I had never had a chance to do.
A piece of me here, a piece of me there,
Who could say who the me in me actually was?
I couldn’t.
I found myself a bird with clipped wings,
Who had forgotten how to sing
Or the reason for a song.
I lived in a cage of fear that’s open door mocked me
I never even had a chance.
No one but God knows the miracle it took for me to finally break free.
No one but God fully comprehends just how bad it got.
And no one but God was strong enough to emancipate me.
He has been putting me back together.
A shattered vase that could only be repaired by its Maker
I became about redemption,
My life became a song that no one thought could be sung.
A spontaneous occurrence of miraculous power
Willed by the sovereignty and faithfulness of God
He had known all along what He planned
His ideas and thoughts and dreams for me
High above the plots and schemes, prisons, and plans for my doom,
He sung a higher song over me
One the enemy of my life could not comprehend
He danced a dance over me
That made the devils who'd tried to steal my life tremble
and broke my shackles free.
I didn’t know much but I know the One who came for me
I know Him better than I know myself
Because He was the One I met before I met myself and the One I fully trust.
The me I know is in Him and the Him I know in me
The one I was always set apart to be
And so I say today
do not despise your shackles and the darkness in your past,
Do not hate the brokenness of your path,
Everything you walked and were and became and endured
Was for your highest good.
To be one who knows and lives and breathes the fellowship of His wounds.
Who thus knows His heart, His joy, His peace,
In the most tenderest forms that forever endure
And create in you a light so bright the devils who tormented you will shiver in fright.
To know the joy unspeakable and filled with His glory
The joy that promises to come in the morning.
You cannot know the value of the warmth of the Sun
Unless you’ve known the dark of the night
All of it will have been worth it in the end
To be found a most faithful and trusted friend
Who knows what it’s like to be broken then fixed
To be shattered then whole
And one who’s gaze is wholly fixed upon the Lover of its soul
Because He is the One who came for you.
Make my life an instrument of your Love and glory, Lord.
I know now it was always all about You. 