I’m so homesick for a world I’ve never been,

and I hope with everything in my fragile skin that your grace will be sufficient

while I’m still down here.

To merely be is a test of survival, 
it’s testing everything in me.

You are the reason I still breathe.

This precious mystery, within all of our brokenness.

So many questions unanswered, but You still sing me to sleep.

You still call me Your kid.

There’s just a proverbial home so near to my soul,
that I’ve never even known,
but so desperately miss.

I feel a looming heartbreak in today

and

I can’t quite tell what is being taken away

or if I’m just longing for some good news. 

Everything that has been tucked in the dark just eclipsed the new. 

I might not know what to do,

but oh how You are here. 

As the waves flood my arteries,

and I loosen the grip on anything that was never mine,

I rest in Your presence and the hope of Your perfect time. 

Thy will be done 

and not mine,

but stay with me until this shadow subsides. 

Grace is sufficient and within it I hide.

I got to know you in the earliest hours of the morning,
but I think I truly fell in love years later, on a Tuesday morning with a cup of joe.

Your mercy never fails to abound the sunrise, and your ear is never quick to turn from my brittle voice. 

This morning is a blank white canvas;

I hear you in the quiet,

I hear you in my pleas for forgiveness, my prying for answers, my begging for comfort. 
You wipe away the tears as I curl up and accept where I’ve fallen short.
It is here,
I can stand confidently before your throne. 

I can peel back every layer of me and it is already known;

This life has never been my own.

I offer it freely because it’s all I have to give, and somehow I’m honored to partake in the loving of your kids. 
The one’s you’ve sealed with a promise but just don’t know it. 

Not yet, that is. 


How sweet the song you sing to us! 

I’m so glad I have these mornings to bellow it back up;
We all know my voice could use a fine tune-up.
How lucky am I to use these works of my hands and praises I score, to be sung to the one they were intended for.

All along you have purchased me. 

All along I’ve turned away.

How precious, how glorious,

be the day we stop running away.

My words are all forced and my heart is all scrunched, and I find myself resisting the urge to steal phrases from writers who are far better than I ever was.
Times change so rapidly, I could’ve sworn it was just winter. Now the leaves are falling again and it’s starting to get bitter.
I don’t have a coat warm enough to catch me up to the change in temperature. 

How our minds change so slowly to concepts we should’ve grasped so long ago. We hold onto familiarity and watch the roots slow, until we are all so lukewarm, and our attitudes so cold.
I peel apart each layer just to watch the bark grow.
Our imaginations never stop and the possibilities are endless, but we find ourselves infinitely alone when there’s no present body to remedy this.
Hours feel like days, and months are like years, just longing for a soul to listen in on our fears.
There’s nowhere we’d rather be than in the arms of a requited unending love: we say we don’t believe in fairytales but we’re all praying for our own version of one. 

What is life without dreams, what are dreams without scars? 
Who will be there to let me know the tears weren’t wasted at large? 
Where does the road of curiosity end and the path of the contempt complete; 

Do we ever get a hint in on God’s work or is our wondering obsolete?

I’m just resting on Your calls for my wandering, wandering feet.

I think that sometimes love is displayed by words left unsaid.
I use every drop of wisdom I’ve been blessed with to mar the dam.
I’ve never been very good at keeping it all in.

Something tells me if I wasn’t afraid I’d go out on a limb,
Line myself up for disappointment in hopes that I’d swim;
Instead of sink.

I think sometimes it’s better to not say much at all.
I deceive myself into believing I’m in control of my fall.
I’m learning that sometimes faith is simply trusting instead of jumping.

I’ve never been too good at being patient,
but I’m dying to learn.

And I am.

I am literally just skin and bones, and maybe just enough hope to get me home.

It’s like I bounce back and forth at every chance that I get,

between a brand new face of hope, mistake and regret. 

But I’ll bet you’ll meet me somewhere in the middle. And I’ll hope it’s just enough to win me over. 

And I’ll pray for peace in the night, knowing you’ll be here when this is all over.

I feel you in my bones when they’ve all drip dried,

and I see you glaring through my vision when the discouragement won’t seem to subside. 

And I know you are watching every night that I cry; singing me to sleep in the midst of the night.

In the midst of all the lions, you rescue me out. 

In the midst of all my worries, you scorn all the doubt. 

In the midst of my failures, you blot them all out. 

And the midst of all the thieves, you still called me out.

I cannot promise I will hold you up,
I can't promise my arms won't give out;
but I will stay.
I cannot promise to squeeze you tight,
I can't promise I'll pull you away;
but I will stay.
I cannot promise I will pick you up when you fall,
I can't promise to pick up the mess, day by day;
but I will stay.

I promise, my heart will always be your safe haven.
You may rest in there for all of your days.

My dear, I promise,
I will stay.

My heart ****** my rib cage every time I’m pulled back down to the road,
I want to move past this hill but my path won’t go.
I’m afraid I’ve become complacent in this frame that’s not my own.
The Lord knows I’m as impatient as they come,
I will try to refrain from believing in my bones.
Fill me to the brim, and I know I’ll overflow.
Take over the faults that have always reaped anything I’ve sewn.
You’ve set the morning over every high and low.
All I want is to go home, but I don’t know where that is.
None of these beds feel right, nothing seems to fit in.
Nothing shines quite like gold should.
Maybe I wasn’t ever made to fit this mold.
Maybe I misunderstood.

Sometimes I wonder if these hands are too weak to embrace the ones I love most.
Sometimes I wonder if these hands are too contracted to unclasp and let go.

Sometimes I wonder if these hands are too heavy for anyone to hold.

Oh, how heavy these palms are.

I offer these to you with hopes that I’ll be able to deny myself,

You pry my fingers apart as you put my past on the shelf,

And I feel the grace between my nails calming my hands back into my lap. 

I get so tired doing such a simple task.

All I am and all I have to bring - though I don’t know what that might be - I give to You my everything. 


How I just want you to use these hands.

How I just want you to hold them.