Peace

A Day Without Zombies

/ Jaimie / Leave a comment

I haven’t written much this week, which is unusual for me. I haven’t been able to. It’s not the ideas or inspirations haven’t come. It’s not that the words haven’t rolled through my brain singing “Crazy Train” while plummeting frantically to the caverns of lost thought below. It’s really been a joint effort between life and confusion, each one vying for my time, sucking at my mind with their imbibing tentacles. They long for me. They long to steal away the moments of vision and clarity as they once did. I’m not easily shaken. Not anymore.

This week I’ve realized how truly blessed I’ve become. That seems a strange thought in the midst of the situation that presented itself which I cannot share with you, but trust me, it was a doozy! I realized that I’ve come to a place where problems (real problems) are rare. That is such a miracle since I once lived a life in which problems (real mind blowing, “how much more can I possibly take” problems) were the norm.

Then you sink to uncomfortable numb. Feelings stop so survival can take over. Your heart beats, you breathe but laboriously in an effort to dim the panic. Breathe in, breathe out. Hide the heart another day until maybe it just disappears. Who needs emotion anyway? My place in life is among the zombies, walking dead with no heart (excerpt from poem called Zombie I wrote in 2009)

Now those days have passed and I am alive. No longer the zombie I wrote about in old poems. I am fully awake. I am free.

So this week, though life hit hard, I find myself thankful. I’m not thankful for the circumstances. I’m not thankful for the pain. But I’m thankful that I’ve entered the realm of the living. I’m thankful that I merely have a problem instead of my entire life being fraught with a myriad of problems. I’m thankful that I am confident in the God whose brought me through so much before and will bring my family through this situation with good in store. I’m thankful that no weapon formed against me or my family can ever prosper or succeed. My confidence is in a BIG God.

I’m grateful for the promise of tomorrow, a future and a hope. I’ve always believed and held tightly to that promise. But now, I’m thankful for the promise of TODAY…knowing that God is with me. The creator of the universe holds my hand and loves me deeply, passionately, and furiously. I am overwhelmed by the wonder of it. I am captured by the enormity of its effects. It leaves me breathless. 

Today I am fully alive. 

 

Prayer of Peace

/ Jaimie / 1 Comment

I always thought of peace in the still, the calm of the water as it sits like glass; so pure you feel like it could hold you. Maybe there’s peace there. But as I sit here listening to the babbling of the brook, the trickling as the water flows gently over rock, white tops bouncing playfully as creek meets stream, I see a peace I’ve never known.

Maybe that’s just another way your peace passes our understanding. We expect peace in the still when noise is dimmed to silence, when movement fades to freeze. Yet greater peace is found in the chaos. It’s in the way the water goes whichever way you send it, the way the speed increases as the path narrows. Yet the whole time it’s guided by the boundaries you’ve set in place. The banks were built to hold it, the boulder sent to divert it, the tree limb sprouting aimlessly out of rock like a mystic, misplaced giant. 

There’s a comfort there in the noise, the splash, the motion. There’s an alcove ahead where the water rests, if only for a minute. It pools with the other drops around it lazily descending toward the next narrow place where it will flow further down the mountain. There’s a safety in knowing that you guide the mountain. You hold the stream. You bring the melody I sing to the sway of the trees you created. You’ve given us this moment. You’re romancing me.

As I leave this place and find myself back in the clamor and commotion of life, let this moment sustain me. Let me remember that you are holding me.

Without the noise, there’d be no music. Without the movement, we’d be stagnant. Without the narrow, we’d never be sharpened and grow.

You are my peace.

Jaimie Dandridge