Live in the Light

As promised, this is my friend’s poem. To provide context, he loves theatre and acting.

The Whole World’s a Stage… or is it?
by Chris DeGraaf

Darkness
This is where I belong.
Curtain
This is where I prove you wrong.
Lights
This is where I’m strong.

I play my part, while I’m on stage: a puppet, a cop, or even a mage.
But what about out there, in the real world?
Am I acting as before me my life is unfurled?

I hope the answer is no.
I hope it will never be so.
But all around me I see those who are;
Those who attempt to disguise some half-forgotten scar.

They put on a mask every day, not knowing that there’s a better way;
A better way to live their life;
A better way to escape this suffering and strife.

So take off the mask; throw away the script.
Live your life as it’s called to be
Before you reach the crypt.

For this Way, this Life, this Truth
Has a name,
And my life’s sole purpose is to bring
It fame.

This Way died a bloody death
For you.
Please believe, these words are
The Truest True.

I said that this is where I am strong.
I said that this is where I belong.

But my place is in life, not on stage.
It is helping others escape the lie,
Escape their cage!

Before your curtain falls, do what is right.
Don’t try to see in the Darkness;
Live in the Light.
I will live in Your Light.

Photo credit: “Severe” by Giovanni Orlando on Flickr (CC license)

Working to Fill an Emptiness :: My Story, Part III

I left off with a statement about considering people in terms of “good” or “bad” Christians, since “by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9, NKJV).

A book that really highlighted this for me is TrueFaced, which “draws a clear distinction between two very different underlying motives: my determination to please God or trust him… one results in a striving that never feels it has done enough to please him; the other results in a trust that experiences his full pleasure.”

I read the book during a time of crisis caused by my determination to please, and I realized that I can never earn God’s love or acceptance. When I looked up TrueFaced in the archives of my blog, I found this:

“People do not notice when I lose or gain weight.
My friends do not lose respect for me when I can’t make qualifying times or if I get sick sometimes.
God does not love me any less when I fail to be passionate about Him. And that brings so much freedom.”

Ever since middle school, I’ve faced low self-esteem. When I started high school, I felt friendless, and I had so much to prove. I worried about making qualifying times for cross-country and track, getting bad grades, getting sick, not being a “good” Christian, and gaining weight. All of that drove me to pour so much time and energy into myself. If I did do things for others, it was really just to look good—for approval and personal security.

Defining Success :: My Story, Part II

Last week, I was looking at my personal “yearbook” from last year. It is not my school yearbook, but one I designed myself, using pictures that I took of my own family’s and friends’ smiling faces, essays and journal entries, and other memories and markers from the year.

This is me literally on top of the mountain, around Thanksgiving 2010.

After looking at the pictures, I felt that I had regressed in comparison to this year. I thought:

"Success is deceptive, no matter how it is defined. My past haunts me, demanding me to do more and do it better, holding me to an impossibly high standard. I hate the feeling that I cannot break my PR in any area of my life.”

A PR typically refers to a race time, such as in cross-country. My coach believes in individual definitions of success, and so my goal for cross-country the past two seasons has been to stay relaxed and enjoy the season with my teammates. Staying relaxed, to me, means not obsessing over my performance. As long as I did that, success based on times was simply a bonus and a lack of such success was okay. Last year, I broke both my emotional and physical (times-based) PRs.

Extending that motto to the rest of my life, I often feel frustrated, and failure to meet even my own ‘expanded’ definition of personal accomplishment feels bitter indeed. The time I spend on schoolwork dominates my schedule, eating up time erstwhile filled with personal devotions, memorizing verses, cooking, bracelet-making, photography, graphic design, or blogging (all activities I enjoyed my first two years of high school). It dominates my thoughts, too; I often want to escape my own thoughts about homework and school, but even with my friends I find myself in a rut of concentrating on school. My mental exertion is just not balanced with every other area of potential growth: emotional, spiritual, physical, which are the remaining cornerstones of a solidly balanced lifestyle.

Even though I’m 16 with my life before me, a specter of past success flickers behind every bush and around every corner, because I always feel as if I must improve.

It appears that Mr. Jeff Goins and I are riding the same train of thought: speaking of viral success, he wrote, “No single creative success can be sustained. That’s why you can’t create solely for profit or accolades. In the end, it doesn’t work. Not if you want to be an artist, anyway. There has to be something more.”

There’s a reason this dreaded bitterness of failure keeps resurfacing in my life, despite my total aversion to “trying to be a good Christian”; despite my friends and family and God who love me no matter what. It has to do with self-esteem, part three of my story.

Just Breathe :: My Story, Part I

On Friday I will read this poem in the final round of my school’s semiannual Poetry Slam. I will be judged for the written form, flow, originality, creativity, and for performed voice, eye contact, and energy.

(Watch a 19-second video of the first stanza: http://youtu.be/mJN5O4nl7-4)

But it is more than a simple class assignment. This is my story from 2010 until nearly the end of 2011—so two years, compressed into one year of gradual awakening and growth. I recently read a post from an incredibly inspirational blog by writer Jeff Goins, about the importance of sharing your story. I have poured my heart out into my blog many nights, but I just realized that it is an opportunity to pour my heart out before a live audience.

Photo credit: "Unginned Cotton" by Jason Chang (CC license)

The first two rounds of the poetry slam were Monday for my AP English class and Wednesday (today) for that class and three others. For those presentations, I just wanted to read my poem and be done with it. I was nervous about presenting and not completely confident that my poem was worthy. I am not a captivating actor or a comedian, but a writer; only a few people understand my writing as I intended. But I pray that these words will touch someone’s heart.

“Breathe”

I pursue a fool’s mission,
Glancing in mirrors, a narrow-minded perception.
Faking my passions and deceiving myself,
To be an envoy of the health god I worship.

I forgot You and left my friends
On the periphery of my obsession.
My heart recognizes the ache but denies the cause.
Isolated at meals, I sit with my plate of austere ideals.

The gloom obscures my reason.
I exist in a dark world in January,
And when the sun finally comes, it’s too late.
My only taste of life is choked down like a pill.

I’m breathless from trying so hard, and impatient,
Waiting for something.
I need something better to fill my lungs.
I stretch up my hand, trying to surface above the despair.

Suddenly, I’m rescued, new—
You rescue me—
And each breath is precious.
The May rains wash my soul, invigorate me,
And promise peace.

Each day my eyes widen more at new wonders.
I sense the Earth awakening, and the
Verdant air hums with life,
And wraps a fresh breeze around me like hope.

Soon, the summer sun stretches out the days,
And makes the air heavy and my breath labored.
Moving on is such hard work; I taste the salty sweat—
But I prefer clarity to dullness, even in pain.

Autumn bonfires fill my throat with burning smoke.
I feel the heat and the pressure inside me,
But I find strength, and I sing,
As my heart responds to Your call.

I revel in the glory of Your creation:
Bursting with color, November‘s dying leaves flutter.
Chill air and the daylight fleeting
Send me indoors to spice and steam.

But You alone can satisfy my deepest needs,
Assure my soul, soothe,
And heal my brokenness.
How could I ever have forgotten?

Seasons change, but every night
I breathe in, out, enveloped in the scent of clean cotton:
My refuge from the world. In You my weary soul
Rests.

© Alisha Newton
November 2011

(First of all, yes, I realize the irony of associate “cotton” with rest, for all its history in the U.S. I have a bit of cotton that I picked clean of seeds, and it smells so clean and fresh.)

Two verses (and a multitude of songs, like “Breathe” by The Wrecking) influenced my words:

“You satisfy me more than the richest feast. I will praise you with songs of joy.” Ps. 63:5

“My heart has heard you say, ‘Come and talk with me.’ And my heart responds, ‘LORD, I am coming.’” Ps. 27:8

At the start, my life was unbalanced, narrow-minded—dominated by one dulled sense: that of taste, representing my obsession with food and the greater implications of that obsession. Slowly, I awoke, and now I feel and smell and see and hear with new vigor. I am alive and, as I wrote, every breath is precious.

I wrote a similar poem, “The Struggle”, for the spring Poetry Slam. It went more in detail about the experience of running track and battling my body, and concluded with lines of “I can’t earn love; I can’t win by conforming to an ideal”—to summarize, it acknowledged the pointlessness of trying to earn love from God and people by being successful.

The last two stanzas of “The Struggle” begin with “I should… I should…” Looking back on it, I wonder, Why did I write it that way? What about “Now I…”? In answer, this is what the fall Slam poem is: it speaks in the present tense. It is now. In the midst of my junior year of high school, I find myself needing so much time to breathe and rest. Even now, I cut short my writing, because I know I have a 5am-10pm day tomorrow—click over for part two.

Break-Up

shreds of two hearts fall to the ground,

and in time
a toxic, unnamable growth

takes hold and piles anger upon anger—
a heap of burning coals—
the slightest nudge sends them tumbling,
burning, with every word,

every silence where a tender word fled
to the depths of our dim and darkened souls,

battling for light and ease,

but trapped in the tangles of that bitter root,
out of which grow both love and enmity,
intertwined.