The Season

Every once in a while, I find myself in this place. This unidentifiable "season," that quite frankly, I do not much enjoy. Normally, it takes being at the latter end of the season for me to see it for it's purpose. But this time, I am wondering if God is willing to teach me sooner. Give me His eyes, while i'm midst the "season," so that his glory may be increased. For me, the process of learning is lived out heavily in writing. So forgive me if this post falls short of any expectations you may have. Because to be honest, I have no expectations but to write and to sort through my thoughts in what will most likely be an unorganized, caotic mess. 
                               
Just love me.

Call me sinner, but throughout my Christian life I have frequently found myself doubting Christ in me. Not necessarily Christ himself (though because I'm human, I've probably been there too) but rather Christ is His daughter, Katelyn Bridges. And not my salvation, just the power of Christ in me to advance the Gospel. Think of it like a questioning of God's right-mindness when he chose me. I think it might had gotten to the point where God was calling me to take a step of faith OUT of my unbelief and into belief in myself as a woman of God, and I failed to take it. For me, it was much easier to wallow around in the shame and guilt and bondage of my past, then it was to just receive grace. Seriously, no one ever told me receiving grace would be hard. I mean even just a small precoursor to the difficulty of comprehending the fact that "God has infintely more grace than I have sin" would've been nice.

All that being said, lately I've begun to brokenly allow God to seap his way past all of the "presentable" places of my heart, the ones that I've so eagerly showed him, and make a gentle home in all the dark corners of my past that I've tried so desperately to forget about myself. This has been a somewhat overwhelming experience. The kind that makes opening the word intimidating and closing it weakening. I am drained of energy. My thoughts are constantly flowing, which makes resting nearly impossible. I am being humbled by the moment.

The other night, as I was drifting in and out of sleep, my phone rang. A call from my past. A call that came with memories of brokeness and emptiness and pain. And as much as I hated the call, I loved what came out of it. For once since accepting Christ in April of 2009, the memories were just memories. They couldn't make me feel ashamed or worthless, or guilty or condemned; all the feelings they brought about for me four years ago. The memories had lost their power. The voice had lost it's power. My past sin had lost it's power over me.

Christ has won. The Gospel, the Gospel, the Gospel of Christ. It is freeing and it satisfies.

Godly womanhood is calling and our steps are far lighter when our feet are chainless.

"But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace." -Psalm 36:11

Gray

Spanish moss, its' choaking shrugs.

BIC's various granite contributions.

Chair-back gray, darker in the curve of crests.

My mothers thining strands,

drained of pigment. Her graying eyes,

weak from the neon chemicals that must be doing

something good. Something gray.

The gray coat drowning childhood bedroom walls with innocence.

Momma painted those, too.

Gray flats on my feet that "bing" as I click my heels in the

gray rain.

Gray light hits the beams that hoist that sail-boat molden bridge,

you know the one.

Gray with freshness; its' roaring strength.

Gray of cracking hands in winter, the tarnished gray that rims my finger

with palace dreaming.

My gray contentment.

The first gray coat of vine charcoal on a blank page;

never black enough.

Gray flakes of clay off his

brown-whale belly.

Eight months removed and still stuck to my shoes.

Gray of haze, blanketing my front porch with the stinch

of an aging man's cubans.

The Minnesota moon; probably still no bigger around than my thumb.

Specs in white knit fabrics, flecs of metal, the pain I never felt.

Thirteen Ways to Look at a Yellow Bead

So our latest assignment in poetry writing was to model a piece after Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways to Look at a Blackbird." We were prompted to steer clear of objects that had any sentimental value or could be taken as symbolic for a larger idea. As I sat in my favorite study room on the 3rd floor of my building, (it overlooks the intersection of Liberty and King with such brilliance) I struggled to find an object in my sight that lacked sentimental value or that I didn't treasure for some odd reason. I honestly sat there pondering objects for atleast 15 minutes and it was growing closer to 10pm than I appreciated. So, I opted to get strange. I prayed. Literally asked God to help me pick an object to stare at and reflect on for the next 1 to 2 hours. And though it may not show up in my writing, there was so much purpose in his choice for me. A yellow bead. A tiny, microscopic, yellow bead.

Somewhere in all of our years of being taught how to grow up, we were forced to lose sight of our child-like ability to marvel at the small stuff. Look intently at things the world deems insignificant and wring out every drop of beauty, or disturbance, we can. To form an unexplainable reaction to something we've seen as pointless to react to, and try to give it a voice.

"I will put in the desert
the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive.
I will set the junipers in the wasteland,
the fir and the cypress together,
so that people may see and know,
may consider and understand,
that the hand of the Lord has done this,
the Holy One of Israel has created it."
                                -Isaiah 41:19-20

So here's my attempt at being ridiculously descriptive of a meaningless object, and trying not to judge the outcome for beauty.

Thirteen Ways to Look at a Yellow Bead

I

Among a crowded sea of

burnt shag carpet and adolescence,

drowns a single yellow bead.

II

I squint with one eye

And land in a world in which there are many eyes

And many yellow beads.

III

The bead is yellow and it turns

around a fishing line;

a tiny piece of a larger whole.

IV

I hover over a mustard mass

The yellow bead and its’ others

Making one big blob of yellowness

And I stare

V

The green jumps at my eye

And I begin to wonder in my distraction

If yellow was the right choice

Or not

But it’s too late now

VI

The tiny boy with his bubble belly,

Black covered gray with desert dust,

hands me some yellow beads

for they  are nearly falling off his celery-stick wrist.

VII

The chalk dust sticks to the yellow bead

As it scrapes against the border of my board art

And though I am clumsily foreign, they remain intrigued.

VIII

Your wristband beams gold

And you scowl at the yellowness

of the bead you can’t understand the beauty of.

Don’t you know there’s life beyond the borders of

your gated drive?

IX

I know proper words and tricks of tongue

And I could make a name for myself.

I know the pain of parasites but I

know too that the yellow bead is involved

 in what I know.

X

The old man strolls his Sunday route

And stops to put a finger on what’s out of place

in the crest of cobble stone.

He tucks the yellow bead in his trouser pocket

and moves on.

XI

At the sight of the yellow bead

the wide eyed child rejoices

the perfect final touch just before the knot of pretty.

XII

With just one tug, the line is broken

and a stream of flowing ROY G BIV

bounces rhythmically on the hardwood.

Red bead, green bead, black bead

I cannot find my yellow bead.

XIII

The flyer scrapes a power line post

as the townsmen pass by glance-less.

My watch is coated with charcoal,

so I lift my chin to the sky to see

That the sun is standing still,

like a yellow bead.