Lord, I'm not close to you

not how I once was / not how I want to be 

not how I want to see myself (not how I want to be seen)

this divide between how I see you

and how the world seems to see you

it is a gaping chasm

no bridge of justification could ever hope to cross it

it doesn't match (it doesn't seem to matter) who you say you are / who I see you say you are

(who I know you are, feel you are, who I need you to be)

The use of your name 

for the selfish desire of those only love themselves / your name in

vain, who are you, if you do not have your heart? (you are vain)

who are your people, when they lose theirs? when- 

they lose sight of yours? / they lose sight of you? 

(lost, yet throwing slivers of wood made from the log in your eye-

at the 99, those who look for Jesus, from your glass house-

shattered glass, I am bleeding, I am losing, I lie dying from the pain from the ones-

the ones who were supposed to show your love, show me your love,

give me the hope and strength to move on, to live, to forgive myself-)

I'm holding my heart to my chest

squeezing tight, trying to hold everything in

the angle is wrong, all wrong, it won't fit where it doesn't belong

the right side of the chest is only lungs and breath and air

no room for the need, the hunger (the desperation)

I squeeze harder, trying so hard to follow what they say

palms bloody, darkest red, almost brown, deeper than I knew I could be

(better than I knew I could say)

my chest is open and gaping. I am not healed, your idea of perfection is a lie

what you wish it could be, so you could sit on your throne

you sit on trash, garbage, the part that doesn't make sense

yet it shines, so it makes you want it 

makes you love it

you don't throw anything away, you say it is good. It is holy. It is right

you judge from your perch as the people around you put on gloves and dig

ignoring that your 'perfect' is rotting. The stench is driving people mad

it makes people hide, they stop digging / I stopped digging

As I watch the garbage make old wounds worse 

like scurvy, open you up

scars are an open wound, an active process working hard-

to keep what was once raw and festering clear and neat, there but not hurting

without what you need, without taking in those words,

that supplement, that part of life, the water, Jesus

those hurts come, and they spread

a wound that cannot heal / will not heal

I will not heal

I refuse / I won't let myself 

I won't fix myself with something so fragile

something broken / something that breaks

something so easy to undo, to destroy, to crumble, to turn to ash

you who lead those astray, he said

he fought for the needy, the powerless, for me

so how can I trust it, what counters who he is

and turns it into a lie, to keep the balance

something that will break me? (Something I can use to break myself)

and so I ask myself as I look around

trying desperately to see you in my this world / in my world

a world that sees you how they feel, how they see fit, how they want.

as they fill their days with hurt, I wonder:

Where is the kindness?

Where is your kindness?

(I don't want to give up)

(I don't want to give up on you.) 

I'm learning to love you as you loved

I'm learning to love as you

I'm learning to love

Do you see it now?

I'm learning.