(Poem 12)

I wonder if it was simply...never about me.
I linger over childhood habits that seem as effortless as the inhale you take now.
A young girl will paint her imagination with dances in dedication to her majesty or contemplate 
the soft stare of tender love given to her despite her charming differences.
Delightful daydreams—the world’s tool to motivate, mold our broken pieces
by claiming proper compatibility is an adequate fix.
I, like countless others, grew up staring into a screen—a window of reality—that whispered, “You are central.”
What a lie.
At some point, the screen grows blurry, crackling with static before it shatters altogether.
You fumble for pieces of the life you knew, hoping to collect enough of
what is broken to reassemble the image you’ve grown accustomed to.
The corners of glass-comprised shards subtly slice their way into the sturdiest calluses on your hands. The jolting shock of acute pain is paralyzing—and curiously revitalizing.
As excruciating as it is, you know now what it feels like to be
awake.
So you hold the pieces with more vigor, and you look past the screen.
What can you see? Is it beautiful? Is it menacing?
Isn’t there something beautiful about possessing the wisdom to notice what is menacing?
How about your words? Do they sound the same or
is it possible that even they feel like art? Articulation is now a work of love given by grace.
Each syllable is elemental, piecing together in a million combinations,
bringing others into the fold of God.
It is a ministry.
My questions do not pry at the sacred beauty that is sorrow. They do not desire to engulf anger in a soothing fragrance. Yet, they plant a lingering seed, a divine afterthought that is:
would you want to go back after all you’ve witnessed?
I wouldn’t.
The air reaches into deeper parts of my lungs. There seems to be an endless spectrum of color, emotion, and life—not this life, but eternality.
Jesus. He has met me, filled me, guided and pointed me to the work of the cross.
A sacrificial love of God so grand that without asking, sought this withered heart and said,
“Wait and see the plans I’ve made perfect for you.”
Plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
I have witnessed the Lord embolden my mother.
Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
She is not weighed by the demands of the world because she has been given the freedom of promise.
Promise that her tears are held, promise that her suffering is not worthless, promise that she will see my brother again. She has been broken and built into
a faithful warrior who I aspire to become.
I have witnessed the Lord take hold of my father.
His delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. 
He welcomes rebuke because he has tasted the freedom of humility and repentance, the freedom of a gracious God.
A God who holds his deepest hurts, a God who promises to share his burdens, a God who lifts up his arms when weary. He has been shattered and molded into
a God-fearing man who I can look to for counsel.
I have seen my hardened heart soften.
For all I believed to know,
I was blind.
The upturned corners of lips only symbolize what you want it to represent. I see eyes void of expression, bodies longing for a kind embrace, hearts hungering for someone to...notice. 
Three and half years later...
I have been redeemed and blessed with purpose: seek those like you have been sought. The tides of grief swell upon my shoreline and the undertow drags my helpless body into a repeated cycle of agony. But as quickly as it rises, it recedes.
Lapses of suffering do not torment, they plainly remind—pocketed pieces of glass that abundantly call upon the truth that I am broken. We are all broken.
The difference is, there is hope.
Though sorrowful, we rejoice.
Though poor, we are rich.
When we have nothing, we have everything.
I will praise the Lord all the days of my life for screens that break because I now know it was never about me.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses,
so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
For the sake of Christ,
then,
I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.
For when I am weak,
then I am strong.