Transformed!—into what I always was

I AM

so tired.

Why am I

so tired?

I am

so weak,

so faint,

so weary.

I am running,

My lungs deflated,

My legs rubber,

My arms nothing but dry bones, mechanically pumping forward not by will, but muscle programming.

“This is what we’ve to do, isn’t it?”

So I keep moving forward,

I am moving onward,

Enervated and… wanting.

I can barely clasp a breath,

It slips past my lips like water—

Everything—slips out of me like water!

I am drenched in sweat and tears

from crying to restless sleep,

I wear my sorrow like a cloak,

It drags and drips and soils everything around me.

Flowers wilt in my presence

And because of this I fall to my knees, tear my clothes and shriek aloud.

I am so wretched!

I am so miserable!

I am so alone!

“Alone?” Whispers a star,

cold and distant,

Nearly lost and sinking in its sea of tar;

“You don’t know what alone means!”

I stare out into the water

lapping the shore beneath the creaking dock

reach out a hand—

and try to hold the star’s reflection.

She slips away.

I was like her once.

I am made from the stars.

I am made from dust,

Out of billions and trillions of thousands of molecules and atoms

Who existed before time began,

Before God raised His great revolver and—

BANG! Began the Human Race!

I was there, in the crowd, cheering wildly—

But I also wasn’t.

I was silent and still,

Like the star’s reflection.

I am built of even less,

But still billions of cells

All living and carrying on for my sake.

I breathe the air of the trees,

I drink the water of the stream,

I feel the sun on my back

and the wind in my hair.

The leaves rustle in my ears

and I know at once,

I am part of them, part of the community of life.

Why then

do I feel so

lifeless?

There is something great I am,

An identity

That has been stolen from me,

Like a crown that once belonged in a palace,

Wheeled away into a dark night by Thieves.

Can anyone find its royalty now?

Glittering beneath the shadows of the floorboards?

I examine my hands,

like a child for the first time;

They clench into fists

And they relax.

I lay down in the grass and hear my heart beat back, setting rhythm to the annelids below.

It is strong.

And at once I realize,

As fast as one learns fire burns,

I am not made to be tired.

I am not made to be weak.

In all of creation—

--I am fearfully & wonderfully made!

My bones are steel,

My heart is fire,

My eyes are roots,

clasping onto anything,

But my soul is a bird, flying free,

singing songs of the paradise

to which it longs.

Why do I tire?

Why do I struggle in misery?

Tell yourself life’s ordinary enough times

And you begin to believe it.

I am running.

I am in the Shadow of Death,

But I will not grow weary or faint.

I will not fear,

I am fearless,

I am a force of nature—an unstoppable will,

I will not surrender to anything less than the truth.

I am resilient,

I am willing,

And I am on my way.

What is the way?

Follow the light:

You will find yourself there.

I am not of darkness,

From it I have crawled out and away;

From it I am rescued.

I am Beloved & I am Worthy

And once you accept that,

You learn there is no glory in anything else,

and so from everything else that whips and bilks, strangles and suffocates,

twists and churns,

I am free.

I am free because I have learned to be satisfied in how greatly I was made

And who I am in the maker’s eyes

which assign me purpose.

I am Worthy.