To think of myself aged 17, scribbling notes down furiously on the pages of my Psychology text book believing one day that I'd have the courage to show someone even a sentence of the petty concerns that addressed my head. I remember my innocence, when I used to believe that if I could write well enough then maybe one day a girl would be that amazed by my ability to write about "broken hearts and paranoid minds" that she would see enough of my own heart to like it, how silly to think that something as simple as poetry and well thought out words could ever scream loud enough to affect anything. I've learnt that words unless mixed with action are pointless and unproven. Martin Luther King could have said whatever he wanted but it was the fact that he acted on that inspirational speech that change started to happen. I used to listen to that speech on repeat thinking that I'd gain wisdom in how to address a crowd.
But to think of those rhymes poetically powerful enough to stop the tick of time that was present in my heart but was absent in my mind when I flicked through my journal attempting to pen some meaningful and soul searching lines. Penned lines about love and hope and I guess mistakes and regrets also got a share in the glory. For we all know that they make us sharp and make us strong or so the triumphant shout anyway having lived their dark days in their history as they stand victorious in their testimony.
Oh to join them would be a joyful but I'd be cautious to approach anyone who simply looks happy, or so my head tells me anyway. Not because I'm cautious of outward emotion, but I know how it can mask troubled eyes, like sunglasses shelter all true exposure. I do remember however that happiness itself is only happiness if you have ever felt sorrow. I mean how could you describe yourself as happy unless you knew what it was like to be sad. I've felt sad. Grief as well. And I've tasted happiness too. But not where I thought I'd find it. It wasn't a bank note, or a girl or a gift that ever made me truly happy. I don't doubt these things for sure can play a big part, but it wasn't until I met my King that I was complete. I wasted so much time looking to be completed and spent hours writing about things that I would now rip up and bin, if I wasn't so sentimental and silly.
I realised when I was 18 that these testimonies declaring joy must have come from a season of loneliness and hurt and that I should learn to take note from such accounts because they could hold the power of change in my own shallow life. How much time I had laboured and bore jealousy upon my back for no other reason than I wanted that joy. I wanted that blessing. But not one person ever told me how. Like I just didn't get that it was something I had to outwork. They made it sound like if I opened up my hands I would have a wife, a big bank balance and a new TV in my palm. That just left me heavy hearted and bitter. Not thankful and grateful for the little but 'just enough' that I had.
I wanted To feel that change and that hope that i had hidden away in a box padlocked with hate and self satisfaction instead of using the key that he gave me all those years ago when I stood at 12 years old in that big blue tent at summer camp. That key was faith. I wanted to claw for something deeper than emotional overload or something heavier than a material gift. It was that faith that I acted on from my initial belief. A trust and a bond that pleaded with me to step out of that crowd that night with my shining white Adidas Stan smith trainers on, one foot after the other deciding I would never turn back. But life got so clouded between 12 and 19.
What happened to me? Faithless at 15. With God in a box and a sinking feeling in my pit. Growing older taught me nothing much other than that the likelihood of ever falling in love always seemed doubtful but satisfying. It seemed fairytale's of forever afters would more likely haunt me than complete me. Dreams of escaping to far of places were almost realities but even running from my planned escape wasn't out of my ability.
It's as if I was cut adrift upon some ocean with plagued thoughts and achievable goals. Willing in my heart to grow and change and cling to my faith in a creator but my unstable feet and the crossed wires of exactly how to live this out made it virtually impossible to surrender my will to his will. Or so I thought that late July evening in 2009 when this topic reared its head in my mind. I could never shake it off. I realised that this sea I was sailing kept me at ease, but it also crushed my dreams. It pulled me down with its tide and filled my lungs with such poisoned regret that no word of love or hope could ever get in. But it looked so beautiful, especially when the sun shone down and reflected its presence upon it. Appealing for sure. Satisfying, not for long. I thought so many times why did I ever continue to float? Why did I climb aboard that rough old boat and sail with my head held high. Then it came to me, and I took hold of it with both hands before it escaped the fragile mind of a young and restless man.
It was faith.
It was faith that made me walk upon that deck and lift that anchor up. It was faith that told me that I wouldn't sink. It was faith that told me that those trials and mistakes wouldn't be the death of me. It was faith that told me to raise my head and believe again. Though my flesh and my heart did fail, faith told me to go again, to cling on and hold on to that promise. It wasn't a faith in myself, or a faith in a friend or leader, or in a notion or even a symbol of two pieces of wood nailed together. No, it was faith in the saviour that was nailed to those pieces of wood. It was his blood that literally covered his body as they drove nails into his limbs as he was murdered for me upon that bloody tree. It's that blood that steers my ship, that speaks a better word over my existence. Oh how we shy from talking about that Crimson love, that sacrifice made for us because it sickens us and turns our stomachs but in honest and simple truth in set us free. It was marked upon us. We are his. Alive and changed.
And I realised that though my faith at times was so simple and embarrassingly small, it was always there. From 12 years old when I let him in. I wavered. I ran. But I could not shake him off. Thank God I couldn't.
No relationship I have ever tasted compares to what I found in Jesus Christ. And no relationship ever will. My cup has been filled. That tangible heart trembling magnificence that breathes life into my bones and takes me from glory to glory. That pulls me from strength to strength. That stands me on a rock. That anchors my soul. It's pure. It's true. I'm so thankful man. Like gratitude spills from my heart to this pen. It's funny how I write about him now, for so long I wrote about nothing worth writing about. He consumes me now, he has my heart. Like to the point where I can't stop thinking about him. He isn't just my saviour. He is my Lord. Just a humble servant am I.
