Questions Don’t Always Have Answers

Questions Don’t Always Have Answers

(“Then he said, ‘I tell you the truth. You must change and become like little children. If you don’t do this, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’” Matthew 18:3)

I’ve seen you playing basketball in the street,
practicing your layups, your three-point plays,
your bounce passes and the hopes you will get to start
the very next game. But, though a teenager now, the child
hasn’t completely left, has it? I know you will even jump
on your trampoline with your 3-year-old sister. Maybe you
just put up with her, but that is what older brothers do.

I’m sure you’ve seen a slew of problems you would like to know
the answers to.
And even though you live right next to me, don’t hold out any hope
for certainty from me.

I know a girl whose mom died when she was 40. She nearly beat that
wicked cancer,
she did. But then her body was done. Her organs began shutting down,
her breathing became labored, and she was compassionately kept as
comfortable as possible.

We laid hands on her, didn’t we? All the relatives; her mom, her grandad,
her sisters, her daughter and their sometime pastor. We were convinced
God could do anything. We were persuaded God would not leave this
5-year-old child alone.

We used to ask for prayer requests at Sunday Services
and Nancy, that was the child’s name,
always asked for prayer for her momma. She asked for prayer when she
was in treatment,
she asked for prayer once she was buried. Nancy only knew God had
to do something good. And the something good would be having
mommy back in the house, laughing with her daughter, making
pumpkin pie together and walking in the fields to collect kindling
for the woodstove through November to February.
God can do anything, the Pastor even said so. But it seems so
unfair
that the God who can do anything refuses to do
everything. Children feel this more deeply than us all. God,
what in the hell did we do to you for you to take away a mom from her
vulnerable child?

My neighbor keeps practicing his shots from the field. I believe
he is getting better, and I’ve never asked him about God.

I only know that I’d rather live with the questions children ask than
the vanilla retorts adults learn from books that give 1000 answers to
questions that are never meant to have answers.

I see Nancy from time to time. She was the last person I every baptized.
Even then, as she went under the water (she did love Jesus), her question floated
just above her head: “Why, why, why, is my mother dead?”

The Last to Leave

 

The Last to Leave

(“He had promised to give a lamp to David and his sons forever.” 2 Kings 8:19b)

Do you remember when you were the last to leave?
I wanted to show my heart, but not all of it.
Music wafted in from the next room
while small talk about big ideas
melted the distance between us.
I wanted you to see me clear, but not the corners.

Do you remember when you asked me where I bought my clothes?
I wanted to tell you thrift stores, but the best ones.
The places I shopped for t-shirts and 3-piece suits
smelled of dampness and sweat. You might not
have minded I guess.
I zipped my hoodie tighter, but not all the way.

Do you remember when you asked the last time I cried?
I wanted to be perfect, and so I lied. It was just before
we started our conversation.
I could write a thousand things and still not plumb the depths,
the reserve hidden at the bottom.
I wanted to cry when you asked, but got up for a coffee.

Do you remember when I returned with your espresso?
I wanted to impress you, show that I know you. Unlike
my silent self which I hid beneath poetry and song.
The dissidents in my brain claimed my last bit of resolve
and so I evolved into a domesticated animal.
I wanted the dark and light to be equal, but served the froth instead.

Do you remember when you were the last to leave
and I sat in the corner watching you lean into a new friend?
I wanted to die. I had denied myself and moved into
the shadows alone.
The very thing that frightened me, the thing that kept me caged,
was the thing you drank deeply as I watched your conversation.

And I had aged far too quickly. I lit my lamp partly.
I used up my energy deadlocking a room that consumed my thinking.
And I watched him, the same age as me, unleash his hiddenness
like a summer cloudburst. You were drenched while
I covered myself from the rain.

I Wear Them Like a Chain

I Wear Them Like a Chain

“([God], look away from him and leave him alone, so he can enjoy his time, like a hired worker.” Job 14:6)

Sometimes you are heavier than glaciers,
and I breathe the moraines left inside me by
the previous ice age. Look away from me until my
heart warms slowly like spring wildflowers along the highway.

You are too present for me, though all I feel are electrical charges
in my brain
sustained from the first second a decade ago until this moment
weeping over the work I’ve forsaken,
the relationships I could not keep,
the mastery over my life that was just a servant to
the chemicals in my brain. Please ease the distance between
us.

I cannot work when you have confined me to unwieldy thoughts
and pain so accurate it stabs me on the spot I’ve made famous
by hiding my fontanels from birth until late autumn. But any
soft spot will do to expose me as a pretender, a joker,
a clown, an actor, a jester, and a swimmer nearly drowned by
exhaustion. Step away just a bit, please, and give me room to think.

Quite prosaically let me say, my anxiety is sky high today.
Every thought is judged, and I have no defense.
Every hypocrisy is seen, and I cannot restart the dance.
Every mutation is obvious, and I cannot modify my genes.
Every tear is tedious, and I cannot explain why my hands quiver,
my thoughts spit from every pore in my head, and I rarely look
anyone in the eye. My life is measured in decades now,
and the charges against
me have piled up for so long I wear them like a chain, and I know
everyone hears me coming.

So, please stay away today, I need some space. Wanting to please you
just brings more disgrace into the veins you created to carry oxygen
to my veins.

So please, I would rather say, (please, do not stay away.)