B_r_a_v_e_s_o_u_l

Every morning in Africa, when the sun comes up, a gazelle awakens and knows it must run faster than the lion, or it will perish. Every morning in Africa, when the sun comes up, a lion awakens and knows it must run faster than the gazelle, or it will go hungry. It doesn’t make any difference if you are a gazelle or a lion. Every morning in Africa, when the sun comes up, you had better be running…

…and so i was. I was running, dashing even, panting, throat-dry and completetely parched from tyring to outrun my soul, from stretching my litheness beyond its limits…. and for what? For what was all these exhaustion? For what was all these stumbling and these regaining of gaits? It was all for that ever enticing… yet ever so elusive… senseless finish line.

Oh yes, it was entirely senseless, purposeful I thought until i realized i was chasing down nothing but temporary heights… nothing but empty and oh so nicely packaged delights.

Oh yes, I had been running for as long as I can recall, as soon as I was set free to chart the world in my own terms. And chart I did, diligently at first until I had been charting and navigating for years I told myself I was tired, and torn, and broken, and betrayed … unable to chart any longer what turned out be a unchartable expanse all along.

It was then when I came to listen to and rely on that inner voice, that which came so faintly at first, but continues to evolve into an inexplicably audible experience I cannot seem to get enough of.

I call that voice the whisper of my ONE, calling oh so incessantly until i succumbed and flourished, until i shut it out one time and almost "perished", and until I allowed it once again to consume me like I had never heard the sound of another in my life.

And so today, that voice has carried me from unchartable territories to boundless borders, it has carried me far above the mornings of Africa, where I watched and cringed as lions and gazelles, much like me, would wake and pick up where they left off the day before.

Still a lot more of us are trapped in this rat of a race. Still a lot more of us continue to fail in this race. If I can, one day, articulate this voice,these whispers from my One which led to a resolve to quit the rotten race, I will.

I wish I could do so now….but I haven’t stilled my heart that much, enough to make the silence of my soul speak for itself. Though I continue to stir, I can feel that overwhelming morning of quietness about to consume me…in the fullness of my brokenness.

i haven’t seen you much but i have heard things came undone,

and i could see it on your eyes…

someone else has pulled the plug and you were left to analyze.

we made you feel lesser and whispered low,

when only your frailty had been exposed…

…i watched you piece together the dignity that had been crushed,

as you smiled and stood up again.

i sat in silence as you thanked God for brokenness,

and wondered what i would have done.

we questioned your thinking and marveled how

you had found strength in your weakest hour.

because we are all damaged goods,

fragile property….we break reluctantly,

we hurt when we fall… like damaged goods,

aching we find… there’s a need for the divine,

but that’s the good … in damaged goods,

oh that’s what’s good in damaged goods.

damaged goods, erin o’donnell

i had been talking much to my-self lately — that self that had broken loose and come undone. oh there were countless moments she was inconsolable and i was caught unprepared, not knowing how to comfort her in her moments of woe.

with this song, i came to realize how i was, after all, the weaker one, and she - my other self - was the graceful one … turning to God in her darkest hours …accepting her faults …facing her fears …conceding to her debility.

by admitting…openly… her obvious frailty and her compounded weaknesses, for recognizing…wholeheartedly…her badly broken entity, she has allowed herself to rest in the solace of an aching child humbled before the greatness of an all-consuming One.

today, i am learning how to come to terms with my other self …. accepting her as the stronger, wiser one … yielding to her search for meaning and purpose, abandoning myself to her pursuit of a silenced heart and a quieted soul, relinquishing my own selfish and mindless pursuits of temporary heights.

as such, this blog will soon evolve… taking on a new life, from a self-seeking story…into an unfolding chronicle.. of how a badly damaged fragile property, desperately aching for the divine, is taking strides towards a simple pursuit …a higher purpose.

some stories will have to go, for they speak of weakness more than greatness, and they speak of shallow truths and needless pursuits.

i cannot promise a story of grandness, however, for i have chosen to start my own story of simplicity, of allowing myself to interrupt life in its interruptions and not let life’s interrruptions interrupt my search for God’s simple, life-saving truth.

until today, i ask myself…why did it take this long for me to understand that it was never about me and my glory … but HIS, alone?