What I Learned from Love

Love was blind for a long time,

Minimize and rationalize all the lies.

Objects hurling through the air.

Words came flying by.

I didn't see them but I could feel when they hit,

They hurt when they came.

Sometimes a rage I didn't engage,

But mostly a stage with parts to play,

A version of a submissive wife,

A servant, a slave,

A chided child who didn't behave,

An extended arm of an ego,

A prop to move.

I didn't remain the same.

My heart was tamed.

I was restrained,

Trained by the pain to remain frozen,

Encapsulated in ice,

I could be whittled down to size.

The stage was incredibly small,

A constricted place,

Enveloped in a gloated ego.

No room to breathe,

No room for me,

Assimilated as directed.

I was affected,

But I hadn't reflected

On the role of my vanishing soul

Down the black hole

Of misguided loyalty.

Faithful to a fault.

Whose fault was it that lies guided my life?

Who was to blame for being tamed with shame,

To lose at a game that was insane

With rules that made no sense

With nothing to gain?

To repeat again and again -

You're a loser. You're a loser.

Hold on. Hold on.

Let me think.

I'm on the edge, I'm on the brink

Of falling into the vortex of your rhetoric.

Is it correct?

I'm not a heretic.

But this shifting sand upon which I stand

Is off the path, it's off the plan.

It's absurd

To swallow the words

Said in the name of love,

Coming from a place of power

That only hurts and devours.

I will spit them out

Along with doubt about my value

And love from above.

I was made in Divine image,

And wooed by a Lover so true to his word

That he didn't cower

In the kangaroo courtroom

Where he was doomed to die.

My Hero made haste to argue my case

And take the place

Of a dying woman diseased within with sin.

He stopped the grim reaper from his deserv-ed

prize.

My soul, my life precious in His Eyes.

I'd fallen in a trap,

With words in my soul that didn't match my

position.

Because the curse and wrath of God had been

wiped out.

I had long ago been lifted up in his love.

I learned that the words flying at me

Bounce right off as I look above.

God removed me from a claustrophobic space.

He pulled me out of a lonely wasteland,

And set me down on a broad base.

The brilliant sunshine on my face.

The lies in my heart, he began to erase.

And Truth grew in their place -

I give you grace. I give you grace.