Music in the Night

My whole life I've been used to seeing.

Taking it all in. Making sense of it.

Categorizing. Analyzing.

Looking for hidden things.

Connecting things in patterns.

My mind has well-worn byways the thoughts travel down.

My eyes see. I recognize things, people, patterns.

Yet this last few months I've been thrown into the dark.

All the familiar things I'm used to seeing around me are questioned

as I reach out to feel them and find them changed.

or find in my lack of seeing a need to change.

Darkness still surrounds me.

The more I squint into the blackness, the darker it becomes.

This throws my world into chaos.

I cannot order it.

I cannot make sense of it.

I cannot control it.

I've been trying to rest in this dark place.

to be still. to feel. to expect surprise and not with dread.

and as I sit and try to connect to my heart and not my eyes.

I become aware.

of a beauty that swells and dips. that clangs and soothes.

I hear the strains that I can't make sense of or control.

I hear the music in the night.

my own soul.

Brokenness

Does brokenness betray beauty?

I look at me and that’s all I see.

In all I thought was glorious I see the depths of pain.

In all I thought was mysterious I see the veil of fear.

In all I thought was beautiful I see a coping with brokenness.

Is all beauty a covering? A justification of pain?

I cannot believe it.

There is beauty in a sunset.

There is beauty in a face.

Neither born of broken things.

Creation’s heart exposed in glory.

Can I believe the same of my heart?

Of yours?

Where is the hope of glory?

Where is the adventure of mystery?

Where is the purity of beauty?

When uncovered in the light of honesty

all I see is the brokenness. The fear. The pain.

Is beauty born only of these things?

Is it then really beauty at all?

My beauty has become ugly to me.

Sad to me.

Hush, you who would still this cry.

This is I, me, myself.

Do not silence my struggle.

Do not try to encourage away my harsh eyes.

Do not try to soften the sharp edges,

Then I may slip on them,

and not be able to climb

to a new place

of seeing, of knowing, of being.

Hear my voice

In it’s rawness.

For brokenness must come to term

that beauty may be born.

Born and loved.