A Return …

You give me breath, knowing my ways –
those tense and the triumphant, leading into
prayer to be steadfast in Your peace and truth.

You Surround me despite the ghosts of the illness,
a sickness stalking the mind and in collateral the body,
a phage salved by the pills to treat, with all brought forth by Your will .

Forgive me Lord, I thought I was special as the thrill crept in.
The false not discerned; my subtle steady tilted too far.
The center fading as I reached for more – for all that I thought I knew.

Were those times so distant Lord?  When I could reach
out with my fingers to touch You.  When this servant was filled with
distortion – could You intervene again and again? 

Yes - You were there, though not as in my thoughts.
Those enemies aligning within me, coming against.
Focusing on the great, on the indulgent – on the self.

 Landing as an inpatient, only more knots to untie.
Without any of my belongings and then in the quiet –
plotting a misguided victory, to continue to deceive.

 Ecclesiastes teaches all is vanity and grasping at the wind.
It took days to awaken Lord, upon the wrong realization
that You slipped through me unaware, in the certain fade of the phase.

But You had placed me away, hidden somehow, avoiding body blows,
a spell with no home, a destruction by accident or by habit.
Spared, three weeks later, I suited up and watched elevator doors close in.

 Each of us created in your image may come to know
that Your mercy and love are everlasting,
and that ailing and healing glorify Your name.