nathanael.ink

I am wearing the headphones i bought with you
I am sleeping in bed sheets you bought for me
I am living in the shirt I received from you
I am laughing with joys that you gave to me
Showing teeth made white for you
Combing hair you liked nice on me
Smelling like I smelled for you
Speaking like you spoke to me
More recent than i heard from you
Last month when you said to me:
I do not love you
I only love me

There is much to this life
that is quite simply
hard to take… it is these such things,
these unwilling realities or unsettling truths,
that will press against your clay bones
as if with intent to refine your shape and leave fingerprints;
the peculiar thing about humanity
is that nothing defines you
except you.

Be as stubborn or malleable as you like
but don’t dare blame the world
for the shape you’re in.

I find that in a breath I might rekindle all my affections…
then in a gasp rekindle such unrelenting bitterness…

“I treated you better than you ever deserved but I finally had enough”
“You don’t have a Christian bone in your body”
“As long as I live, I won’t ever let someone treat me the way you treated me”
“You just scare people away from Christ”

…these just resound and resound in my head.. I acknowledge they are fresh breeds of the enemies old tricks ..

Today i reflected when i helped her uncle with a wedding and her aunt was rushed to the hospital but i stayed to help. I felt helpful and useful. We sat under the stars as the night winded down.
I remember parks and gifts I labored over trying to think of the perfect new way to show love. Drove an hour both ways just so that when she left work she could be surprised with 5 letters on her window. And many things like this.
Somehow she never wants to be treated like that ever again..

how frightening a thought. To be unchangeably deemed
uncouth, unconsciously brutal, unwittingly outright
with all your demons -little terrors which keep in your eyes
then up out your heart,
bush up the helm in rushes of pressure and displeasure
they misguide my rudder
missteering my ship. Missgoing a way

toward unchangeably unhappy me
..dear God not tonight…

please be changing me…

Did you finally
hear
my actions speak
Louder
Than my heart
Can scream

I wrote once, told friends once
That every moment when I expected I may get that confused looking “youre and idiot” face girls my whole life have been so good at giving; I never once did…

Well now that’s all I get, even when I didn’t expect it at all…

The truth validates itself. A word like “love” has no definite truth outside of “a word that describes our God.”
To claim it, is unlike claiming anything else. It is to claim you desire to imitate that which you do not fully know, but to claim it assumes as ones understanding grows, as does ones actions. This entails every facet and sort of love. Intimate. Brotherly. Parental, etc.
There is a story of two sons, both are told to go work, one says he will while the other says won’t. Yet the one who says he won’t is the only one who does, and Jesus tells us he was the righteous one.
This parable always concerns me…