i have tasted the evil

one image

a thousand words?

this image breaks my heart

tears flowing

inconsolable

one image

my heart breaking
broken

because the image is so true

i have tasted the evil

i have witnessed it with my own eyes

Lord, why are you silent?

hear the cries of my heart

hear the cries of her heart

Oh Compassionate One

this cannot be what you intend

the consumption of human flesh

the eating of our young

Created in Your Image

the travesty is indescribable

unforgiveable!

my heart hardens
i am without mercy

open the eyes of my heart

Lord God Almighty

El Shaddai

i am tempted by evil

tempted to vengeance

protect me from my acrid rage

be with me in my trouble

rescue her

rescue me

The Lord says, “I will rescue those who love me. I will protect those who trust in my name. When they call on me, I will answer; I will be with them in trouble.  I will rescue and honor them. I will reward them with a long life and give them my salvation.” Psalm 91:14-16 NLT

Rw

darkness

I often give evil too much credit.

In the predawn hours on this wintery Friday, my dog Harley is nestled on my lap. Sleep eludes me, so we are in the living room, snuggled into white cotton blankets, finding comfort in the back-and-forth motion of a wicker rocker. The street lamp outside the window illuminates a clean, white snow. The light of the floor lamp near our rocker floods the pages of a book, allowing me to re-read The Shack.

There is something about December's short winter days and long cold nights, something magnetic and dark, something that pulls me toward despondency. And in the weeks that follow, in the days of January, as I climb out of the dark and uninhabitable caves of depression I am helped by revisiting familiar stories: Gone with the Wind, It's A Wonderful Life, The Shack ...

These are the earthly measuring sticks against which change in me is self-measured.

Like a lost gift found behind a wilting and abandoned Christmas tree, something I hadn't seen before leaps from the page, bringing life to my tired soul. I close the book, stopping to ponder the idea that darkness is not a thing of itself with mass and shape and power, but rather darkness is the absence of light, evil the absence of good.

Christ Jesus has illuminated the way.

Those who trust in Jesus have been given redeemed hearts, but our bodies and the world in which we live is still physically affected by sin. Our bodies still die, our psyche is still marred, we still are prone to the selfish pursuit of being our own god, and Creation is still screwed up, but this is not the end. Our redemption has just begun. - from Beliefs, Fellowshipcf.org

So never be ashamed to tell others about our Lord ... For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan from before the beginning of time—to show us his grace through Christ Jesus. And now he has made all of this plain to us by the appearing of Christ Jesus, our Savior. He broke the power of death and illuminated the way to life and immortality through the Good News. - 2 Timothy 1:8-10 NLT excerpt

 Rw

blackest night

The railing is more substantial than expected. I'd driven across the bridge a thousand times, but this night for the first time I walk it. I am close enough to the railing to touch the smooth, round metal. The circumference is more than twice the distance measured palm to fingertip; my two hands together look too small to fully grasp it. 

Walking the 4½ miles from a friend's spare bedroom in Camino Park to the bridge on South Hastings Way did not alleviate my desperation. Step followed step. Seconds gathered into minutes. An hour passed without memory as though a dense fog had swallowed up the visual and visceral cues that life exists. I experience myself without dimension from somewhere deep within, a heart beat slows and grows loud, pulses a primal accompaniment, intensifying my need for escape. 

The air is cool. Its breeze delivers a hint of fall. The river below is still and soundless, lifeless and black. Day has turned to evening. 

The night is swallowing the sun. 

My hands move toward the railing. Headlamps on a passing car illuminate a large black spider, the builder of an intricate web anchored in the smooth, round metal. I am startled and fearful, eyes alert and intent on this unexpected adversary, hands now motionless in midair, heart and soul moving as though in meditation: behold the delicate web. 

The bridge had been my destination, the inky black river my intended tomb. 

Behold the delicate web: intricate and anchored, woven and unwavering. 

Blackest night cannot devour the sun. 

Spiderweb in Sunlight by Nicko Margolies

When you beg the Lord for help, he will answer, “Here I am!” Isaiah 58:9 CEV

Rjw

it was 1985. a brutal battle for custody in the midst of shattered dreams. the isolation of divorce. economic poverty. an overwhelming sense of failure as a parent and a person. 

graceless space

as i look at the childhood pictures of dear friends, my eyes brim with tears ... tears for the pain suffered as children forced into prostitution and tears for the pain suffered today — knowing there are photographs, fearing that someday the images will surface.

Child pornography is escalating. Explicit content of younger victims is becoming increasingly available and graphic. Online child pornography communities frequently trade content for free and reinforce behavior. Offenders often consider their participation a "victimless crime." — Urban Institute [read the abstract]

as i look at my sleeping grandson, my eyes brim with tears ... tears for the pain that will inevitably come into his life, the struggles, the disappointment, the hard knocks life on this earth inevitably hands us. most on my heart is grief and fear, that this baby still in diapers will likely be exposed to pornography between kindergarten and third grade. 

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

    I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters,
    I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
    they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
    you will not be burned;
    the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the Lord your God..."

— Isaiah 43:1-3 NIV excerpt

grief and fear within me, a heart hardened, graceless space

Rjw

Plaza Suite

In high school I was cast as the secretary in Plaza Suite. I wasn't much of an actress. Our drama adviser told me to be more alluring. Not quite understanding what she meant, I became even more unsure of myself. Perhaps I never read the whole play, nor learned my lines. Even during rehearsals, when the audience was cast and crew, stage fright stole my words.

After opening night, a friend of my mother's loaned me a red blazer. I'm not sure that helped.

Today as I read the synopsis, apparently my character doesn't warrant a name...

In [the first act], a relentlessly chirpy wife indulges in a scatter- brained fit of sentimental nostalgia. She revisits the scene of her honeymoon—but was it 23, or 24 years ago? —with secret hopes of reigniting the ardors of early love. Her husband is a taut rather than tired businessman who has kept his eye on his weight and his secretary. The wife has suspected as much: "You were working three nights a week—we weren't getting any richer." She seems put out that her husband had no more enterprise than to pick his secretary as bedmate. Along with the jesting banter and bitchiness of the much married comes a feeling of poignancy for two people who find that love, like the sand in a thousand breakfast egg timers, has run out.

... and I am intrigued.

Not by the lack of a name for the character, but by the relative innocence from which I approached her, a single layer in a theme of innocence in my life today. In the third week of May, a man I greatly respect spoke into the messy story of my earthly life the idea of innocence.

"...be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves."

Matthew 10:16

... and I am intrigued.

At first it seemed far-fetched that a woman with nearly five decades of life behind her could maintain innocence. Yet, I look back and see a pattern, places in life where for whatever reason when evil visited, I held on to innocence.

Exposure to pornography while babysitting, a high school teacher sharing inappropriate jokes, the scuffles with promiscuity in the summer of my 23rd year... all held vast potential for harm. In journaling this fall, I discover 34 separate conversations and events, moments where innocence was assaulted. A dozen are accounts shared with me by others, detailed stories of evil told to me by random strangers and close friends.

In the verse given me by the man I greatly respect, there are two gifts. I am innocent. I am shrewd.

God is using both these gift in me ...

... and I am intrigued.

Rw


Plaza Suite by Neil Simon 1968
A Heart Not Big Enough 2011