I Don’t Want Your Love

“Goodbye Stephen” 

the words quiet like a secret, but arresting and firm like a juggernaut train going a 80 miles an hour straight into my chest. Train car after train car hitting me again and again like the waves of the sea, and me realizing this is it. There is no more. This is the end of her in my life. 

Cold wind searches our bodies, blowing our hair as we stood in the middle of the street, and my eyes are brought to bear with the sadness I was seeing in her eyes and the love that I wasn’t able to hold anymore. Not wanting the reality, the fight leaving my body, and unhappy resonants in the linear progression lingering for longer than I would like, I muster my own, 

“Goodbye…” 

that I mutter under my breath. 

I don’t want this. 

I never wanted anything like this to happen, and now I’ve lost my best friend. 

The answers aren’t clear, but not because there aren’t answers. At any culmination in a breakup or relationship it’s easy to say “it’s complicated”, but a lot of times I don’t think it’s that complicated. When that kind of loss is laid plainly across the table the heart rips and atrophies, and subjectivity might as well have been made to walk the plank at 35,000 feet. 

I’m “in it”. 

Go get some sources on what actually happened, because right now my heart is pumping pain to every part of my body and my bearings aren’t steady. Every outpouring of sorrow and anger is permeated with the guttural “NO!” and “WHY!?” reverberating across my body to communicate to a God that I don’t love right now that I don’t approve of His methods. Those screams you heard in the night may have been mine, and the resolution was silence.

Trekking twenty miles on foot through frozen barren back roads of vast expanse I found myself alone amongst the cornfields of Ohio free to curse God, looking for a fight, as the pain of the run forced to the forefront those things I wished never to admit that were lodged and settled deep inside my belly. Blind rage worked its way up and out of my body, as I littered the road with the reasons I hated that strange Creator. There, in that place, in between the concrete, the running shoe, the sharp wind, the sharp tongue, on the visceral, desolate, dog-eat-dog plateau under the suffocating grey clouds that I feel I’m crushed beneath, I run, shaking my fist to the heavens as the only retaliation I know how to make in firm objection to how He’s created all things in this world, and in that seething hotbed of knives and viperous venom, God’s arms wrap around me, entering into my pain, comforting me. 

There like Judas, the Lord embraces me, holding me firm, as I move to put Him in His place and crucify Him. Opening up, He does quoth, “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me,” and I wishing to wash myself of Him cut back with despair, uttering Pilate’s nihilist defeat, “What is truth?” 

With those quick, choice words I hoped to usher in silence, and escape from His love. The Clouds open up, my body running beneath their face, screaming in rebuttal, “The truth will set you free!” Incurrent, the wind sweeps my body to ground, and I rip from my heart, “I don’t want freedom! I want to be enslaved! Tie me to the ground, because I am blocked at every way. I wanted her, and I wanted the ones before as well! I don’t want your love! I don’t want you! I hate you! I’ve always hated you! Free me from your grasp, from your conscience that is so installed in the drivers of my mind, unhinge me, and let me be free. Death despises the life that you bring, and I am a rubble heap hoping for more like me. Get back! Release! Unhinge me!” 

In that moment the grappling stood still, 

And the silence worked its way up to my will. 

More words were said that I needed not say,

and my heart burst again and again as I placed the blame.

 

And in that cold dark hour I saw the reflection

In my heart of hearts the lack of resurrection.

Tension brought to bear,

And raise up these questions

 

Is this how you bring life?

Is this what you came to see?

Strife is my binding,

as raging as the sea.

Leave me alone,

And let me be.

 

I’ve never been good enough

For what you’ve wanted for me.

Dad, why can’t I be good enough?

Why do they all leave?

And in that moment His arms stood to embrace,

And more than at other times I received His grace.

In lightless night He shown more bright

Removing the blindness from my sight.

 

Spake He whence beside my cries

Letting truth go forth and and silence lies.

Reckoning with the one upon the earth

He who had given the darkness birth,

Chastising with radiance in His eyes

Demanding answers for broken lives

With justice swift and Holy haste

He plucked him, giving him taste for taste.

 

“Ignoble serpent I espy thee

One who was present beside the tree

My son, my daughter I will not suffer

To believe that I am wrath and not lover. 

 

Cast thou self beyond my sight,

Or I shall give thee reason for your flight.

For you would have them believe that I am a tyrant

Thinking that I have forsook and left them silent.

 

Cries day and night I hear them all.

My children lie in pain, and out to me call.

For you would drive the nails in my hand,

And yet leave them not to understand

 

I have entered, I am there.

What kind of snare would I not bear?

Love has entered into their blindness,

But I will not treat you with any kindness.

 

Get thee back and release your words

Dissolve the madness that underneath stirs.

I have loved them, but you would dumb them,

Whisper that I have come to condemn men.

 

That is not Love, and that is not worthy

I speak in my own name, Death, unholy,

Death, unhold me. Triumph through pain,

Because Death can’t hold me.  

My Son my Daughter, in me please adopt

The strength that I gave you drop for drop.

Through your veins is coursing, power endorsing

Potential for everything that I bought.

 

With blessed assurance 

Trust me with messy endurance.

The trials will come, 

And one day they will be done.

 

Until that day, rest in my name

Trust that I’ve made you without blame.

And in the darkness seek me until the last

Even if you feel outside of my grasp.

 

The trust you’ve given will be for me

A prize I will bestow upon thee

Greater than any thing on earth, 

Greater than any curse death could birth.”

 

And from that fullness that He had wrought,

The heavens gazed downward on those whom He had sought

With instruments panging in holy procession

Bringing new sons and daughters into succession. 

 

So, if you stand here today without declaration

thinking that life should be without adjuration.

Earnestly I plead with you in soul and mind,

to draw your sword, and to break the bind,

 

Over those thoughts that stray in wayward action

Making you believe that there is no traction,

Between real and false and something other

Because thinking like this won’t let you discover

 

True love as a palpable expression

Instead, leading fear into possession  

Of all that is near and dear in living

Squandering your life instead of giving. 

 

So forever be peace, be hope, be love, 

Holy Gifts from up above,

And fix them together with the substance of truth,

A Faith that you cannot produce.

 

For liars will come to steal what was planted

In you your inheritance and seek to supplant it. 

But stand firm, and in Him find courage to go on,

Disarming despair and bringing a new dawn.