Pages

Monday, September 21, 2009

Romans 5:8

My fingers are splayed across the white butcher paper. I observe, dismayed, that when I pull my hands away I leave dark grease marks behind on the otherwise unadultured landscape. A lump is speeding up my throat, my face is burning red, my eyes are glassy with tears.

"Everything I touch turns to ruin. Everything I leave my mark on is left worse than I came."

Can you even tell I was here?

Yes.

I see it in the blood stains on the carpet. I see it in the dirt caking the baseboards. I see the crushed and groaning landscape, and I know, you were here.

"Everything I touch turns to ruin."

Like a house of cards the walls fall stiffly and lightly away, the ornamentation of this room is like sand in my teeth, the light like so many shades of gray. My hands turn wrinkled while I watch . . . is time really passing? So this is what it means to waste away, a slave to one's own failures. A delicious and vicious catch-twenty-two.

This is what it means to understand that I am not lovable. That I am not enough.

I see that you were here. The evidence is in the bodies in the alleyway, the proof is in the poison we drink. I see it all around, the violence and the pain and the destruction. Yes, you were here.

"Everything I leave my mark on is left worse than when I came."

Such is humanity, that our sin should consume us alive.

Blood crawls along the paper, the red on the white, blood on the snow, blood on the bleached clean linen, a crimson stain covers the grimy marks. The bodies are buried to rise again, the antidote has arrived, the house of cards is built aright, light is color, and the color is hope.

I can breathe again. The world is no longer accusing me, "You are the reason, you came and destruction followed, you are the hurt that scarred our hearts."

This is not my load to bear.

I am not enough, and this is beautiful. I am not lovable, and I am yet given love. I have existed disoriented by the reverberating patterns of mania, and now I exist in peace. Forgiven. Freed. By the blood of Jesus Christ the Lord of heaven and earth.

Do you understand what He has done for us?

6 comments:

Art said...

Oh!

"The bodies are buried to rise again, the antidote has arrived, the house of cards is built aright, light is color, and the color is hope."

Do you understand what He has done for us? How can I, ever? I can't comprehend it.

Thank you for drawing this image in my mind, Hayley. Oh my goodness, what the blood of Christ has done for us is unbelievable.

Kaitlyn said...

There is nothing more beautiful than the gospel. Thanks for using words to describe it in a unique way...

Micah E. said...

"I am not enough, and this is beautiful."

And this is beautiful.

Michael Au-Mullaney said...

"So this is what it means to waste away, a slave to one's own failures." Despite the wonderful post overall, and amazing ending, this line is my favorite.

Hannah said...

...no words, cher?




:)

Art said...

Hayley.... this is one of my favorite of your blog posts ever.

:weeps: