I, like many of you, am no stranger to melancholy moods, mental ambushes, significant internal pain, etc. I’m 53 years old and let’s just say that this is, uh, not a new thing to me. It is less frequent and less intense particularly in these last years as I have finally found a “bottom line” of God’s goodness that has changed the game, and I am wildly thankful for that. But I still face acute mental trials, sometimes quite painful.
I’ve talked before of how I’ve discovered the practical GIFT that poetry has been and is to me related to this. It is genuinely therapeutic for me to try to write a poem like right in the midst of the challenging, even agonizing, situations. I see how creativity is neurologically integrating and how that is a massive blessing when I’m stuck in my brain, particularly my left brain, and am therefore quite neurologically disintegrated. (One poem I posted even directly addresses this.)
SO… long preamble to say that I wrote this one last November to try to more healthily navigate a stressful/overwhelmed/low time. And it’s been in my mind so I thought I’d post it.
A few notes: the title is a remez (thank you Marty Solomon/Bema) to Psalm 139; “Social One” is an Enneagram subtype reference; and the “expired window” of the last verse means that the poem at that point was 47 minutes in and my internal critic was quite happy to heap more vitriol on me (“the boobirds were in full swing” is what I wrote then haha) for how I was even messing this therapeutic/worship offering up and basically I’d taken too long for it to be useful. So I ended the poem feeling thoroughly wiped out and failed. And yet! And yet! That was not the end of the story. It did help. I’m learning to endure and to find a “peace that surpasses mind” (Philippians 4:7). I’m learning how to be John Schwartz, a beloved and favored child of the King, who doesn’t have to nail it.
So I’ve got that going for me… 🙂 And I can not WAIT for heaven when these sorts of struggles are a blip in the rear-view mirror.
Blessings y’all.
