Faith Is Worth The Fight

This too shall pass

I wrote this poem many moons ago, but today it is heavy on my mind. It's been a little dark in my heart lately. A hope has left and I'm grappling with the vacillation between fatalistic surrender and the discipline of effort sustaining where faith has failed. Or alludes. Or needs redefined.

The band delirious? sang these lyrics in their song Obsession. It's been one of those stick-to-my-soul kind of lyrics since I first heard it a decade ago. I feel lonely without hope. I feel desperate without vision. Conjuring hope, vision, purpose - these are hard things to snap and create or re-create or re-create again. When nothing satisfies (credit that to the wonderful Jenn Knapp), when the soul is dry and thirsty (credit that to a Psalm of David), when the storm overpowers the lightness of day (credit to myself - as seen below), what can be done? Can personal effort really make change? How does a semi-(emotionally or spiritually) crippled person walk across a room for help, sustenance, redemption - a will to choose something (anything), when the heart is numb? When the future is blank? When the purpose in the pain is intangible? When all effort seems to be flailing about? Or failing.

I don't have answers, but I do have the Psalms. Passages full of meaning, depth, struggle - the GOD I'M FREAKING OUT...BUT kind of stuff. BUT. But. But you are Good. You are Love... This too shall Pass. Peace and direction and vision and purpose will be restored. Defined. Redefined. Rediscovered. Exile doesn't last forever. Beauty for Ashes. All things new.

In light of those age-old passages of struggling comfort, here is one of my own - my "modern day psalm." Today, I meditate on what it meant to my 22 year old self's confusion and angst and rough waters to write it. And what it means in the present. If it was true for me then, it will be true for me now.

A simplistic faith sustains. Faith is worth the fight.

This Too Shall Pass

The storm overpowers the lightness of day

In its consistent sleet of darkened memories

I know not when it began but I know its strength

I've been here before-it knows no boundaries.

In the murky shadows, near and in the distance

The cold breath of fear has its claws in my frozen heart

Unable to take shelter because of its enormity

Stuck and struck with its embrace, I cannot escape.

Then reality sets in and battle scars stand on edge

The wisdom from days gone by presents itself trusting

I draw from every place I know to find strength

The ability to keep walking, moving, standing

On the truth and in the light that darkness shall pass

I hold to the simplistic faith that sustains

And I fight. Because I've learned, from days spent drenched

Never to question in the dark what I knew to be true in the light.

C2003, Lindsay Louise Bachman