I never claimed to be good at poetry or free verse, which is why I never went very far in that genre. I am relatively certain that someone will find something 'technically' wrong with this. Please keep in mind that the words are just my bleeding heart speaking....maybe not meant for anyone else to see.

Without love I am nothing
Or so Paul said
So I love through the pain
Though I'd rather be dead

Jeremiah ate the word
Job....his own tears
Me? I wade through the muck
of all my wasted years

My mind won't let me forget
My heart is broken beyond repair
Sorrow threatens to overwhelm me
Til I promise myself not to care

When thunder all around
crashes and wanes
I stand in the strength of Christ
He alone keeps me sane

I still have few answers
I'll never know all of my whys
I cling to my Jesus
He alone hears my cries

Life is a burden
Death, sweet release
I pray it comes quickly
Each day I beg please

To live is for Christ
To die is my gain
Paul said that too
He knew his own pain



I've posted this second piece twice before. Once when I wrote it, and once again a year later. I am posting it again, because it is still true and it's still me. I may not have the "trinkets" now that I mentioned but I am still the prisonerofhope.....and I would still make you one too.....if I could.

There is nothing I wish I could give you in this life that is more valuable than my faith.

I have many things.

I've lived long enough upon this earth that I have amassed a few trinkets. Barring an unforeseen disaster, the rest of my life looks to be as comfortable, financially speaking, as the beginning of it was.

Yet nothing I own, nothing I could hand down when I die, none of my grandmother's silver that sits in her mahogany corner cabinet in my living room, no amount of money, status, name recognition, or any other family heritage, can compete with the worth of the faith that hides in me. If I could give it to you like someone gives someone else a live kidney, or part of their liver, I would do it. I would do it for any one of you. I would die and let you have my beating heart, if I thought that would give you my faith.

If I could, I would put my faith so far down inside you that no one, even the ones you love, could touch it. Not with their sarcasm, their rolling eyes, or their intellectual unbelief in a God Who is so much more intelligent and so much wiser than any feeble mortal mind, yet chooses to make His message so simple that a child can understand it.

I would put it in such a secret place that even when the winds came and blew at your life, you would rock steady, baby.

I would fix it so that even when the rain beat on the door of your life, you could close your eyes and know that you are not alone in the storm and that when your night of weeping is over, great joy will come in the morning.

I would hide it away so far inside of you somewhere that even you, in your moments of sin and unbelief, could not rip it out. It would sit there..... waiting......waiting......waiting..... for you to leave your own way and the stuff that holds you and come back to the One Who gave His life for you.

It would wait for you to get sick of your own meager, base and lowly thoughts and chase after the only One Who has the Words of eternal life. It would wait for you to get sick of your lust and desires for the things of the world, and your hope that someday ..... someday.....a person....a man or a woman...will fill that empty place inside of you that only He can fill. It would wait for you to get sick of yourself. If I could do that, I would. I promise, I would.

The faith I have didn't come by happenstance. It didn't come by luck, or chance or because I'm better than anyone else. It came because I decided that I wanted God more than I wanted my life.

It came because I have made many choices, in the face of severe adversity, to hang onto the Rock of my salvation. It came because I chose, even as I hugged my pillow and begged God to let me die, to tie a knot in the end of my rope called faith......my teensy little, wavering, flip-flopping rope of faith, and hang on. I hung on, baby, and I didn't let go.

Even when my hands burned as the rope rubbed against them. Even when my face was blotchy and my eyes swollen from crying. I hung on. Even when the fear overwhelmed me and I thought I would be swallowed up by it........I hung on.

I have a faith and a hope that no one can take from me. No one. Not even my dearest and best. If you wanted it, though, I would give it to you. Free. Because I got it for free. I've paid for it with my very life, but it was still free of charge from the One Who gave it to me.

If I could, I would make you a prisonerofhope.