Descaling My Eyes

Help me, God.

I live in darkness;

I wake to loneliness;

I am perpetually afraid;

I am yoked with pain;

I feel injustice in my bones;

I am humiliated;

What happened to Your love?

God, it feels like:

You caused the darkness;

You removed my friends;

You put me in fearful places;

You gave me this pain;

You are unjust;

You grind my nose in the dirt;

And I no longer feel Your love for me.

But what if this world has blinded me?

To Your light;

To Your presence;

To Your comfort;

To Your healing;

To Your mercy;

To Your lifting of my head;

Even in this?

By faith, God, I say I believe:

You are light in my darkness;

You are here with me in my aloneness;

You are my fortress through my fears;

You are healer of my wounds;

You are my only hope of justice;

You are God and I must humble myself.

Help me in my unbelief.

Through my blinding scales, I see:

You walked the deepest darkness;

You were completely alone;

You experienced fear unto death;

You took the most brutal wounding;

You endured the justice I deserved;

You humbled Yourself, willingly;

So, this world could never take Your love from me.

More radical still, help me see my emotions are Yours:

My darkness is a drop in a sea of what You have witnessed;

My loneliness is Your ache for those who reject Your love.

My fear is Yours from deep betrayal of those You love;

My pain shows me Your heart as You endure man’s brutality;

My anger is Yours over the devastation of Your beloved;

My humbling is necessary so I can see You.

And my eyes are descaled, finally.

                                           Patti McCarthy Broderick

                                           April 2019