Ok, you.

I'm not ready for you, and yet I'm pining for you to advance. You're full of a longing ache that can't be stopped. You're like a painful medicine that has to run deep down to fully take.

I'm afraid of the what you are going to ask of me. I want novocaine for my heart, because it hurts to even look too long at you. When I do, I see how unqualified I am for the job. I don't have what it takes. I'm not enough. There I stay fixated. On me. That's what fear of you does to me. Turns me inside. Over-analysis. Self-obsession.

Then someone tells me the truth. You're also full of promise, full of hope. A hard word is brought from a brother. Someone shines a light. I look around the room of my life, in the faces of those I love, and I see it's gonna be alright. There's hope that abides in all of this. And I can't expect to know that on my own, all the time, about you. I've got to trust community. And I've to hope that the things I give up now, and the things my life has lost, will be graced.

So, ask what you will of me, and I'll work up to the task. I'm going to fall short, curl up, choose exactly what I don't need, but it will be redeemed. What you ask doesn't require perfection, just life. So as I live, I aim to be present with you throughout. It's what I have right now to give.

And hopefully, as I say goodbye to you and welcome the next year, I'll see love, hope, and forgiveness had won, 2008. Now, geez. Start already, wouldja?

____

"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us." Henry David Thoreau

Thanks, Ang.