I will hold you in the light.
I will hold you in the light.
YOU.
Who feels hollowed, you who feels as if wholeness was long ago swallowed and the only hallowed ground around you is littered with broken dreams and empty explanations of what might have been, what could have been, what should have been. The wind of why lists in the alleys and reverberates the haunting shattering echo of your guttural cries.
I will hold you in the light
And I will hold space for all your broken pieces
Even the ones kintsugi cannot line with gold
Pollyanna can not glad into goodness
Where all the βat leastsβ and pithy platitudes ricochet away to lie gasping in the center of the room in which we quietly sit.
I will hold you in the light
And I will hold space for you when courage evaporatesΒ
And braving the wilderness sounds grand on printed pages
But in the wild reality of today, it recedes into very fuzzy edges.
I will hold you in the lightΒ
And carve out space for all your unanswered questions, curve in for all your unasked questionsΒ
Smooth the velvet of the settee, one way and back again inviting repose for all your doubts and fears and distrust and disillusionment and cynism and despair.Β
I will hold you in the light when you feel smothered, every mistake you make corrected and overcorrected and dissected, when you feel weary of feeling the least smartest person in the room, I will fold back the coverlet of grass-green cotton and plump the pillows encased in seafoam blue and you may rest, enveloped in the knowledge of how valuable you are.
I will hold you in the light when you donβt want to start and you canβt seem to finish, and the hard, hard middle stretches endlessly ahead and mediocre makes up all that you are or ever will be.
I will hold you in the light with open invitation for all the parts of you gone missingΒ
The ways our religious world has ignored embodied livingΒ
We can sit and find the winding way back to ourselvesΒ
Let us look with awe and wonder and be reminded there is more to life than well-modulated phrases.
I will hold you in the light when everyone around you speaks of all the Lord is doing in their lives and you sit there numb and namelessΒ
When every other sentence piously proclaims βthe Lord told me thisβΒ
and your faith crawls with convulsing gasp into the corner.
I will hold you in the light when itβs an average, ordinary, simply Tuesday and you arenβt quite sure if you find it to be not cute or you find it to be the small, quiet life you actually need.
I will hold you in the light when the soundtrack in your head is stuck on this question, βWhy Canβt I Get It Together?β and life is too much and inside out. You feel too much and not enough all at the same time, and it is impossible to show up in all the ways. It seems you are letting down one person right after another right after another and the riptide of overwhelmΒ is sucking you under and thereβs no air to gasp out, βHelp, Iβm Drowning!β
I will hold you in the light when the broken way is the devastatingly painful way and every two steps you stumble and stammer, you grasp for any handhold, tears soak your pillow, and your prayer in the night is wordless with wailing
I will hold you in the light when delight dies and darkness decries its worthiness
Grace runs amok and hope feels stuck
And joy does not find you in the morning or in the mourning
Peace is not present and all the angry voices increase in volume.
I will hold you in the light when friends wave away your worries and you feel dismissed, dismayed, distant, diminished.
Unseen, unheard, undervalued.
It feels as if you are a project to be fixed rather than listened to in love.
I will hold you in the light on the days you’ve reached the tipping point and it all spills over and you are buried by a barrage, floundered by a flood, sent spinning, spinning, spinning.
I will hold you in the light when your heart and soul and mind and body long for affirmation and people-pleasing puppets you up Highmark St and across Beauty Boulevard and onto Prestige Pike hoping against hope that this time you might make an impression worthy of approval.
I will hold you in the light when you are disturbed in so many ways and all that you knew or thought you knew is falling away and the disconcertedness of it sits hard and heavy in the shyest parts of your soul and vulnerability is your starting surface and in this tender place souls are easily injured with the most well-meaning of words.
I will hold you in the light when your soul feels worn thin like a patchwork quilt, pieced together here, wound tight over there, unraveling, seams and stitches trailing, a tapestry of trailing tears and widening tears.
I will hold you in the lightΒ
When your soul has finally had time to catch up, to exhale and inhale in a slow and steady rhythm, and the sunshine of gentle curiosity has soothed and cajoled and given careful consideration to the places in need of cradling.Β
I will hold you in the light when you feel like you are always trying to catch up or keep up with the people living around you, panting one way, puffing another, and you’ve lost sight of who you were in the first place, let alone who you know you want to be.
I will hold you in the light when you feel stuckΒ
Mired in mundane with no idea of what to changeΒ
When life’s responsibilities require more than one person can rightfully curateΒ
And all the tasks try to ask for a mandate of knowledge and perfection.Β
I will hold you in the light when savage laughter is adorning the dark with snickers of condescending satire and calculating sarcasm looking, looking, looking to level you and let you know there is nothing lovely about you.
I will hold you in the light when you find yourself stuck on a careening rollercoaster, OVERTHINKING, labeled large above the entrance of this ride. The carnie has fallen asleep. Exit impossible. Decision inscrutable. No possibility of choosing the next best thing.
I will hold you in the light on the days when envy and jealousy jostle for position, uninvited houseguests rummaging through the cupboards, ransacking any kind of order, wrestling in the corridor and clanging through the vestibule.
I will hold you in the light when the voices in your head are loud and louder, infiltrating all of your consciousness, erasing any vestige of confidence, adding up the sums of insecurities with clanging ka-ching, ka-ching, reminding that you really are the sum of all your worst parts.
I will hold you in the light when you look around and can not recognize the life you inhabit but for the life of you, you can’t figure out a way through the maze of gray and haze and darkness to follow the stars to the other side.
I will hold you in the light until every Sad thing really does come Untrue
And Aslan strides back into the story He has never left
And we link comrade arms and walk barefoot up the grassy hill stretching eagerly toward βFurther up and Further in!βΒ
And the cover has opened on the Greatest story ever where each chapter is only better and more delightful than the one before it
and it is brimming with the imagination of Anne and the nobleness of Mr. Knightly and the purest childlike heart of Little Lord Fauntleroy
Where The Harvester’s kindness and love of detailed beauty sing and fellowship is gathered by Jo March while Beth plays the piano and great goodness is known through all the landΒ
And all that has come before recedes to be replaced with the noblest of all that we have ever wished to be
Curiosity and sunshine are the delight in every day
Hearts sing for gladnessΒ
Our souls grow stronger, clearer, nearer,Β
We are embodied in the way we were always meant to be
We float in currents of contentment and climb to heights hung with happiness
The air is clear and pure and all the questions and doubts and worries we carried are blurred into nothingness
We walk along sandy seashore or soar across meadowed plain
And the song we always sensed in our soul finds fervor and freedom
All the pieces click into place as we start to understand the depth and value of who we are as created beings.
Beautiful.
You have done this for me several times over the years. I resonate with many parts of this beautiful poem! Thanks for sharing it & your heart.