What Good Am I?

Don’t look now but your heartache is showing. If it was anything like mine you tried to fill in that big empty space in your heart with God only knows what. Scary thing. That you can be so null and void and still be walking around. Man, you don’t even know how many ways you’re broken. If you could look for a second into that black yawning need of your own shame and guilt and pain and confusion you would stop breathing. It’s not even about the latest gut stomping disappointments and betrayals. It’s a pain that goes back so far it can’t be traced. It’s a generational thing, maybe even a humanity thing. The echoing rhetoric of ‘what am I?’ ‘What good am I?” What does it mean? Why does it hurt? Why can’t I learn to get things right? Why don’t I ever learn from my own mistakes? How many chances do I get? I know it’s going to end, When will it end? Will I be able to stand the pain of my own demise? And the pain builds on top of the heap of disappointments already there until what’s left is only smoking wreckage.

Then the phoenix. A hand reached down for me, and God never, never let me forget how You, You alone turned back for me. You lifted me out of the ashes of what I had made of my life and You made me new just like You promised. So long I had been obsessed with my own attempts at getting my situation right. There was no way out. Like a gerbil on a wheel, I was going around using frantic energy to get nowhere. I was a sinner, Lord and defeated by myself. I had been benched by the enemy but You, in Your glorious mercy, had other plans. You put me back in the game and I swear I want to play my heart out for You. On the wings of an eagle, I have new perspective, a whole new life because I made one right decision, to listen to Your voice. Let me make a difference, Jesus. Let me be Your words, Your hands in the time I have left. If only I would have concentrated on You from the beginning but now I know I want to concentrate on living Your way from today until the end. I know now what good I am in the world. I am any kind of good You want to make of me. You show me Your Real Face. And You are not what I expected. I’m in awe and I am reborn and I am blown away and I can’t describe the love that You give and the love that You are. Lord, I'm just a fool and a stupid ass. I've got a big mouth and everyone who's ever met me knows it's quite large enough to hold my foot since it's fit in there many, many times. But in Your hands I am a poet, an ambassador and a light on a hill. Let me sing, Lord of the miracles You've promised me because when they arrive, eveyone will know how You keep Your Word. The heavens and earth will pass away, but not so, Lord, Your Word.

Ecstatic contentment tonight.

Peace to all,

Ki