Alone With My Thoughts

I guess every poet comes up with this one eventually.

This “poem” is not silly. In fact, I have never been more serious or intentional in anything I have written. It is not that I have no thoughts. Nor is it that I don’t want to share my thoughts with others. It is that there is no such thing as thoughts I have while “alone.” It may drive me to insanity, but I am determined to become consistent in my belief in an all-knowing and very present God. One of the worst hidden hypocrisies in my life has been holding the belief that I have “the ear” of the most powerful being (God) but not voicing my thoughts about others to Him. How many times I have scrolled through Facebook and thought this or that about my friends and acquaintances without “voicing” those thoughts to the One who can do something about my concerns? Do I see someone who is filling his or her life with hatred? Why would I not voice my concern about that to all-powerful God, the one best able to teach them love? Do I see someone hurting and reaching out to friends for comfort? Why would I not voice my sympathy to the great Comforter? Hypocrisy is usually associated with action. My hypocrisy has consisted of inaction.

Grief Will Always Out

This scene, and the words I attached to it, is extremely moving to me. I guess that by my age, there is a lifetime of grief that will not go away in the short term. As a friend wrote, there are “So many missing springs.” Indeed. I can never see the daffodils, wild violets, and other spring flowers without thinking of my Mom. Ever since 2006, they have bloomed without her.

The scene is what I saw when I crossed the bridge where Rush Creek enters White Rock Lake. A few weeks before, I had taken the following photo, which I then captioned “Grow Old Along With Me” (an allusion to Dad’s favorite poem, Rabbi Ben Ezra by Robert Browning: