The House That Time Built

Two decades of marriage over. No drama, please. Divorce sucks. It is what it is.

Once I had accepted this fact, around 2005, I began the process of mental separation. Who am I? What am I doing here? I wasn’t raised here. I have no family to fall back on. I don’t belong here.

And yet, this empty place is a part of me now, a part of who I’ve become. It’s hard enough to end a marriage, but to divorce myself? How do I do that?

These questions swirled around inside my head for months, coming to a head one day when I was standing on a dike behind a deserted homestead. I was praying fervently for direction. Where do you want me to go? What do you want me to do? How do I leave everything behind and start over? What about my kids? I need an answer. Give me an answer and I’ll obey, no matter how hard. But, I need something I can hold on to, God. Something solid.

The ancient windmill creaked and groaned and tried to turn though the air was still.

I turned to go. My eye caught a flash of white on the ground. I knelt and looked closer.   There, nestled in the bare circle of soil left behind by a cow patty, was a perfect white arrowhead.

I’d never found an arrowhead here before. Heck. I never find arrowheads anywhere. And it wasn’t a bird point, either. It was about an inch long, with a notched groove running through the center. And it was so bright and clean. Polished. Almost as if someone had planted it there.

I stood, following an imaginary trajectory with my eye.  It was pointing at the old homestead.

My first thought was You have got to be kidding me.

My next was I didn't really expect an answer.

I picked up the arrowhead and held it tightly, the jaggedy edges cutting into my palm.

The whole place looked like a warzone. Elm branches, fallen through the years, formed a protective cage around the buildings. Barn doors hung haphazardly from their frames. Window panes broken. Tin peeling off the roofs. The rock wall surrounding the yard was crumbling.

Wearing sandals and a sundress, I climbed over and under and around and through the fallen trees, weaving a path toward the house until the wall stopped me. Scratched into the cement on top was a set of names. Women’s names. And dates. 1952. A little further down. Another woman’s name. 1939.  Elsewhere, another name and date. All women.

What in the world?

As time goes by, I’ll tell you more about the Crazy House. But for now, I’ll introduce her as a curmudgeonly old lady who has grown tired of men with fancy ideas about what she ought to look like, or who she ought to be. Originally built during the days of homesteaders, she’s held off Indians, cowboys and the infernal New Mexico wind for nearly a century. Drawing her skirts tightly about her frame, she managed to survive two decades of complete abandonment to the elements and marauding cattle, thank you very much.

Rats and mice. Snakes and spiders. Raccoons and badgers. She’s seen it all. She’s been pillaged by thieves. Struck by lightning. Even had a dead cow in her bathroom.

And still she stands, her shingled roof hat slightly askew.

She’s tough. And kind of classy, in her own way.

It took 6 years and a lot of cajoling to bring her into this century. At times, she seemed almost grateful. Other days, she obstinately held her ground, refusing to budge an inch, which is why I have a crooked hall that leads to nowhere and a bathroom in my bedroom.

She has a sense of humor.

And a bit of a temper.

And she has secrets. So many wonderful secrets.

But at night, as I lay cradled in her womb, I feel protected. Safely tucked away until I am ready to be born anew.

Outside, scratched into the cement in front of her tiny yard, stands a guard of women who have loved her.  I am proud to say, the last name on the list is mine.

And inside, on the dresser beside my grandmother’s Bible and a picture of my granddaughters, is the arrowhead. Together, they serve as a reminder.

This is who I am. This is where I came from. And this is where I’m going.

WHAT did you just say???

The other morning my devotional was about purposeful joy. The writer (a fantastic woman, minister and author) suggested we must actively find things to laugh about because, in her words, “Life just isn’t that funny.”

What?! Do we live on the same planet?

Recent headlines: Man Killed By Rooster with Razor, Oklahoma Man Hides Chainsaw in Shorts: Get Away Not the Fastest Ever, Circumcision Ban in San Fran.

I know there’s nothing funny about death or stealing or circumcision. But come on. Don’t you ever wonder, what the heck were they thinking?

For me, humor is only as far away as… well… me.

I have a can of mace left over from the shooting and I admit, I never really learned how to use it. For me, it was all about the gun back then. Now, 6 years later, I’m not so jumpy or on the edge of my seat angry all the time and I thought maybe I’d wean myself off the little fella in the holster. I dig out the mace and read the directions. Simple enough, I think. Except, this little spray thing on the top doesn’t look right. It’s like, hidden underneath a flap of plastic. What’s that about?

I pry around a little and eventually figure out the flap raises allowing me to slide a finger inside the apparatus. I do so. Just before I pull down, I realize I’m staring into the eye of the nozzle.

What the heck am I thinking?!

Quickly, I replace the cap and store the innocuous little red bottle in the nightstand drawer. Safer there. Less likely to hurt myself with the little fella in the holster.

And then there was the incident with the Public Regulations Commission. After spending hours researching trademarks, domains, filing for an FEIN and a TRD ID, then poring over the documents necessary to form an LLC and file the registry, I went to bed feeling rather pleased with myself. Until I realized I hadn’t filed with the PRC. Which technically, should have happened first, since they are the final word on whether I can have a certain business name in this state.

So bright and early the next morning at exactly 8:01, I called the PRC. A nice young man walked me through the steps of registry. What is the name of the business? Los Caballos de Fuego. (Fire horses or horses of the fire) He checks. Yes, that is available. Print out these forms, fill them out, send duplicates and a check for $75.00. Blahblahblah. Before we hung up, he said, “Hang on. Let me check something else. The spelling might make a difference. Your business is named Los(L-O-S) Caballos (C-A-B-A-L-L-O-S) de Huevos( H-U-E-V-O-S), right?”

I closed my eyes and laughed silently as the logo I’d figured out for Fire Horses morphed into porn.  “Ummm, no,” I said when I could finally speak, “Not Horses of the Testicles. Horses of the Fire. Fuego. Fire. Please.”

Horses of the Huevos. Death and taxes and theft might not be funny. But that is.

Cowbusters

We have the damndest cows! They’re like a gaggle of 12 year old boys, disappearing whenever they sense we are thinking of them. Any other day of the year, they stand beyond the fences, bawling for a snack. But let the banker schedule a trip to count their bony little bottoms and vamoose they’re gone, like a wisp of fog.

I’ll tell you a secret: the banker has never actually seen all the cows at the same time.

I’ll tell you another secret: neither have I.

Where do they go? How does a 1000 pound short hairy animal hide? I think they’re really shape shifters and they’re pretending to be trees.

So what do you do with shape shifting cows? You bring out the big guns, that’s what.

(Cue music from Ghostbusters.)

Zach and his trusted steed, Cedar. 

Cowbusters.

Cows tremble at the mention of their names.

Today, the banker’s gonna give it another shot. I tell you what, if those dang leather bags don’t line up at the feed spot, I’m gonna sic that boy on them, I swear. And when he gets done…

Well … when he gets done, I’m going to wave good bye at the gate, cause I’m pretty sure I won’t be seeing them again for a long time.

Sigh.

Maybe I shoulda been a farmer. At least corn stays in the ground where you plant it.

Denial

It is the common misconception of marriage that you simply add another person to your life; that it is a choice you make in the same way you choose relish or mustard with a hot dog. Then, after making your selection, you keep going the way you were, only with a condiment. This idea is fostered by love songs and flowery cards and in novels with buxom women gracing their covers. 

This is called ‘romance’.

Here’s what they don’t tell you; marriage neither adds to your individual existence, nor subtracts from it. It merely alters it. Forever. Neither participant is flawless. Therefore, it goes without saying that when combined in marriage, just as strengths are doubled, every weakness is increased two-fold. Think of two pieces of paper glued together. One can’t be removed without tearing the other to pieces first.

This is called ‘separation’. It is best done quickly, as in ripping off a band-aid.

Unfortunately, even after the ripping is over, it’s not really over. It’s never really over.  There will always be scars, ugly thickened places where the glue held tight. And there will be holes, where pieces are missing. You can’t run from the emptiness anymore than you can run from your soul, for it is the place inside you that has torn loose, a ragged wound with edges that unravel a little bit more every day.

This is called ‘divorce’.

Last night I dreamed of the house I lived in when I was a little girl; an old farmhouse, a shotgun house, the kind where all the rooms open off a long hall running down the middle. Our neighbor said that was so you could shoot through the front door and out the back without anything getting in the way. Because he was so earnest in his telling and also because he was an old man with teary eyes and butterscotch in his pockets,  I believed it must be a useful thing, but then I was also the kid in fourth grade who wrote an essay on Why I Know Santa Claus Exists.

For the record: This is called ‘naïve’.

I remember specific and unusual things about that house; that the crack under the back door was too wide and when the snow blew hard from the north you had to roll up a towel and wedge it beneath the door or else the floor all the way down the hall would be covered with a fine dusting of snow. One time the electricity went out after that happened and the snow turned to ice and I skated in my house slippers and heavy winter coat all day. I also slept with my mother in the bathtub that night because the propane heater kept the bathroom nice and toasty no matter how cold it was outside. I remember how, when the attic fan was turned on, it created a suction strong enough to lift a sash from a housecoat right off the ground. The first time I saw that happen I was ten. I thought it was a cobra and screamed so loud it brought my mother in from the back yard where she’d been hanging laundry. She still had a clothes pin in her teeth and we laughed until we cried.

The pipe beneath the bathroom sink had a leak. It happened during a particularly bitter cold spell, when the plumbing froze, but we didn’t find out about it for a long time. We kept a rug on the floor there so our feet wouldn’t  freeze on the linoleum in the winter months and by the time summer came, it was so humid everything was damp anyway, so we never took notice. Every so often, though, the rug would sour and Mom’d come home with a new one and for a while it would be okay.

This is called ‘denial’.

When the floor got spongy, Mom called a plumber, but  by then it was too late. The damage was done. He billed us thirty two dollars for labor and parts. I think the leaky pipe  cost a dollar and forty two cents.  But the floor was a different story. To fix it, we’d have to strip it all the way down to the foundation and gird any damaged joists  with new lumber on both sides. Then we’d have to replace the plywood with a special type of wood that resists water damage, plus install new linoleum on top. I don’t remember how much it was all going to cost. It was enough my mother never gave the idea a second thought; she just bought a new throw rug and I learned to brush my teeth standing catty corner to the sink to avoid falling through the floor.

When we moved, the owner of the house claimed damages and withheld our deposit. My mom got mad and said she’d sue him. She didn’t, but she took all the glass door knobs off the doors for spite. To this day, when I see a glass door knob, I think of how much a dollar forty cent leak really costs.

I used to wonder if she’d known up front what it would cost to fix the leak, whether things would’ve turned out differently. I don’t think so. I suspect she knew there was a problem all along.  I mean, how many rugs does it take before you look under the sink?

She pretended because she didn’t want to know the truth, and then she kept on pretending because she couldn’t afford to fix what was really wrong. And when she couldn’t live with her mistakes any more, she left.

In most ways, we’re opposites, my mother and I. But in that one way, I’m very much like her. And really, when you think about it, opposites are like that. An ocean is an expanse of water without land. And a desert is an expanse of land without water. In America, a Christian goes to church. In Africa, a Christian is the church. In one word lies the difference between the Sahara and the Pacific; Africa and America; life and death.

This is called ‘truth’. And it is priceless.

excerpted fiction
copyright 2011

I Need a Hero - But I'm Not the Only One! Part II

Okay. I admitted it. I need a hero. 

That’s a bitter pill for me to swallow, by the way. I’m a died in the wool I-can-do-it-myself gal. I guess I figure if I’m not dependent on anyone but myself, I’ll never have to be disappointed, right?

To tell the truth, I’m not that great at doing-it-myself either. I mean, I’ve just spent ten years living in a cow camp with no electricity only to divorce and end up in a crazy house with 400 doors, a dead-cow ghost in the bathroom and no running water. I have no job and more doors in my house than dollars in my bank account.

Someone told me once the world is full of knights in shining armor but I’m too busy piling them in the saddle and giving Ol’ Whitey a slap on the rear to notice. I’m starting to think that might be true. Somewhere between Cinderella and Single at 47, I gave up on the whole idea of heroes.

And then I read about Adam.

Wait, wait, wait, you say. You mean the guy in the Bible? That Adam?

Sinner Guy?

Yeah. Sinner Guy.

You know, Adam is kind of an interesting man. He had unique living arrangements. (This, from the queen of bizarre living arrangements.) His home was a garden and the only other occupant in the entire world was God. But even 24/7 God wasn’t enough to fill Adam.

Adam needed a wife.

Cue music: Here Comes The Bride. 

At this point, it’s tempting to fast forward to the proverbial apple. But wait. Let’s talk about Eve.

Eve had a weakness. God knew about it when he made her and he knew about it when he gave her to Adam. He knew about it when he said it is good.

So, we all know the rest of the story. She sinned, and it changed her and, suddenly, she’s different from Adam. She’s mortal. She’s flawed. She’s dying. She has a sin nature now, so she offers the fruit to Adam which puts him at a crossroads. But, unlike Eve, he's not deceived. He knows exactly what’s at stake.

He has to choose between his Father and his wife.

Between life in the garden and life in the desert.

Whether he will live forever with God or die with Eve.

The scales are kind of weighted in God’s favor. I mean, as far as I can see, he holds all the cards, here.

And yet, Adam picked Eve. Why? I mean, God could have made a new bride. He did it once, he can do it again. Maybe the next one will be even better. Eve 2.0.

And yet, he chose the apple. Scripture doesn’t say this, but I don’t think temptation was Adam’s problem. He didn’t have a thing for fruit. He had a thing for his wife. And let me add, at this point, her once perfect body is now mortal. Her once flawless features are flawed. The old gray mare aint what she used to be.

And yet, he still loved her. He was still committed to her. So much so that he chose to make himself like her. He chose to become one (dying, rotting, decaying) flesh with her.

Don’t you know somewhere in the universe a buzzer went off? I can hear it now ... Brrzzzzt. Wrong choice, Adam.

Angels shake their head in dismay. What kind of man chooses a chick over God?

The kind of man who couldn’t leave the woman he loved behind. The kind of man who knew the true character of his Father. The kind of man who is made in the image of God. All that quality time with God paid off. It created within Adam the heart of a savior.

Sure, Adam ended up being remembered for eternity as Sinner Guy. But before that, he was a Hero.

Like his dad.

Straightjacket, Please!

I don’t remember when, precisely, my life took a turn for Crazyville, but I woke up needing a white padded room today.

I must finish the ranch taxes but I can’t access all of the information I need until next week, so for now they are spread across my desk in piles that make sense to me today, but will be jibberish by Monday.

I need to finish an Economic Development application, but can’t move forward on that until my meeting next week. Those piles are on my coffee table.

I need to meet with the Attorney and complete creation of the LLC so I can finalize the divorce but – you guessed it – not able to meet today. All that information is stacked on the kitchen table.

On the home front, there is a mile of fence that was supposed to be in last year but wasn’t and is now keeping me from moving 31 head of cows into a pasture with adequate water.

There are 33 heifers, on the other hand, in a pasture by the house. They have plenty of water, but no grass and my CSP contract requires they be rotated into the next pasture … where they have grass but no water because the tank has a leak and must be repaired. And since today we are having a warm but windy break in the Winter From The Bad Place, guess what I’ll be doing this afternoon? For those of you who have never poured cement: It’s dirty, dirty work. I’m going to look like a mummy before it’s all said and done.

Tomorrow morning I have to go to town. Normally, I’d be snoopy dancing in my undies at the thought of it, but no… this is a quick in, quick out trip, meaning I have to travel an hour and a half, pull in the drive through at the bank, deposit a check, then turn around and head home. And since I still have no water at the house, that means no shower before that little trip unless I take an icy plunge in the stock tank tonight. Oh.Yay.

Just before going to bed last night, I received notice that I may be called out early for a 6 month job that wasn’t supposed to start until April, but may now begin in two weeks. See the above Must Do list and now you know why I didn’t sleep last night.

I’m not complaining. I’m just explaining why the next time you see me I might be wearing a long sleeved white coat that laces up the back.

Miss You

 For Babe

I’m young, I smile

The world smiles with me

And I pause

For just a while

Spring sun warm

On my upturned face

Seasons turn

As I learn

The touch of God

I grow, I laugh

At children playing

Some are young

And some are not

The twinkle of an eye

Words of an old friend

Across the miles

I recognize

The voice of God

I sigh, I breathe

Crisp autumn-filled air

And inhale

The scent of life

Pinon smoke

Mixed with snowfall

Cedar boughs

And I know

The breath of God

I’m old, I know

Sometimes I stumble

But with tender hand

You lift me up

Walk by my side

For the next mile

As hand in hand

I understand

The love of God

I Need A Hero - Part 1

Several years ago, I was drafted into a six year tour of hell called divorce. One evening about half way through, I was home alone watching one of those sad, sappy love stories, the kind people wallow in when they’re miserable and lonely. Right about the time when the hero rescues the damsel in distress, an unbearable weight of loss pressed in on me. I felt like it would break me in half. I began to sob.

“I can’t take it. I can’t take this. It hurts too much.”

No man is tempted beyond that which he can bear.

I hate it when the voice of God horns in on a perfectly good pity party. This night in particular, I was in no mood to be placated.  For me, pain is not a tolerant friend, nor does it mince words, and this night it drove me to speak with blunt honesty.

“How would you know?” I challenged. “You’ve never been in love.”

I was tempted in the same way as all men.

I wiped my nose on my sleeve. “Is that so? Cause, you know, I don’t remember that in my Bible. When did you fall in love with a woman, Jesus, and she didn’t love you back? Who broke your heart? What was her  name.”

“It was you,” he answered softly, “You break it every day. But I’m not going to stop loving you. I’m not going to leave you.”

And there it was. The heart of Christ, laid bare.

The intimacy of that moment changed me, changed the course of my life. And it changed how I view my relationship with Jesus forever.

Let me say, I’m no Theologian. And I’m not a Bible Scholar. I’m not even someone who reads their Bible every single day.

I’m an artist, so I see things through the eyes of an artist.

I’m a woman, so I see things through the eyes of a woman.

And I’ve been abandoned, so I know what it means to be alone in a really scary world.

I know how it feels to be left behind.

And I know I need a hero.

What It's Like to Disappear

Excerpted from Killdeer (which is excerpted from my life)

copyright 2011

There are days in early spring, after the first columbines have spread their feathery purple petals to the sun and the mares stand beyond the fence, tails swishing lazily over the backs of spindly-legged colts , when I remember God. Times when a million meadowlarks sing all at once and the sky smiles down through eyes the color of a robin’s egg, and the smell of freshly cut grass wafts intoxicatingly through the rusted metal screens on the window by my desk, curling back the curtains’ edge to reveal lacy boughs of elm, when suddenly the skin on the back of my neck draws tight and I suspect He is remembering me too.

And I hope He isn’t.

Those are the days when I remember what it was like to live. What it was like to feel and not be afraid of where those feelings might take me, or what they might cost. Or who might have to pay the price. What it is like to run toward something, rather than away from it.

It happens less often now.  I smile and pretend my life is like everyone else’s.  I let down my guard, forgetting that the past is a freight train barreling down a narrow tunnel toward me.  In the split second before impact, I realize: This is it.

This is how a burn victim feels, holding a mirror for the first time, realizing they have become someone else while they were sleeping and that the person they used to be no longer exists.

This is what it’s like to disappear.

The Cake Walk

The other day my (almost) ex-husband got stuck in a snow bank about a mile up the road from me. I have a four wheel drive. Therefore I am the appointed hero for today. But I’m not feeling particularly heroic. I’m feeling cold and cranky and my water is frozen and I want to eat cake and wear my pajamas and stay snug in my old-lady house. And, I mean, let’s face it: If he’s stuck, doesn’t that mean I’m going to get stuck, too?

Then again, I can’t just leave him there to turn into a people-sicle. Can I?

Decisions, decisions. What’s a (co-dependent) almost ex-wife to do?

(Sigh) Layers on. Socks. Thermals. Jeans. Flannels. Coveralls. Boots. Scarf. Hat. Gloves. Coat.

Stepping outside into the calm after a storm always makes me feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland.  The world has grown new features overnight, sprouted hills and valleys where once there were great barren plains. Boughs hang heavy from the trees, shoulders drooping beneath the weight of the snow. And my normally good tempered barns bare their teeth with icicles while cotton candy stretches between the fence posts, spun thick and white and sweet where there used to be barbed wire.  The outbuildings are nestled into new hillsides. And sometime during the storm, huge drifts have sidled up to the house like Polar bears trying to stay warm. 

I don’t want to venture far into this land. It is cold. It is strange. And it is formidable.

But then there’s that people-sicle waiting on me.

I let the glow plugs warm and then start the diesel. The Big Beast growls to life, angry to be disturbed from his winter’s nap. The first bank of snow waits at the end of the driveway. It slows us, which only annoys the Beast more. I step on the gas and he growls louder, plowing through the crust, sending it spraying away in fluffy plumes.

I smile.

This could be fun.

The snow has blown into the roadway, filling the bar ditches. I know that somewhere below lies a road as lumpy as a third grader's first attempt at baking a cake. But the snow, like icing, hides the ridges and potholes, creating a frosty illusion of perfection.

For the record: snow lies.

The Beast is not intimidated. I stop on top of the hill and put it in four wheel high.

“Piece of cake,” I say, adjusting my sunglasses.

Famous last words should be easy to eat, right?

Good. Cause I’m eating them less than a quarter mile later, when the Beast is consumed by a giant confectionery blob. It swallows us whole, sucking us down into its soft white belly. I try rocking. I try rolling. I try cussing. Finally, I open the door and step out into snow up to my knees. A few steps to the left and I’m in over my thighs. I decide to return to the Beast, lest I fall into a hole and not be found until spring.

Back inside the cab of the pickup, I reach for my phone to call the almost-ex.

“I’m stuck.”

“I see.”

I lower my glasses. Yep. There he is. About a half mile away facing the opposite direction, half submerged in icing.  There is a life-lesson in this, I think. Something about drowning people not being able to save each other. Or two people going in opposite directions, spinning wheels and getting nowhere. Just burning up energy.

“The snowplow is coming,” he says.

I hang up. Then call him back. “You won’t forget to tell him I’m stuck too, right?”

That I even had to ask…

I close my eyes. Such dysfunction.

Half hour later, blade shining, chains glinting from his tires, the snow plow towers over the Beast, carefully scraping away the frosting and wiping it on the edge of the road. The driver hooks a chain to the Beast and slowly pulls us out of the bank.  With a wave and a grin, he rumbles on, carving a deep furrow as he goes.

I look up and my almost ex is facing me on the narrow tunnel of a road. Bumper to bumper. Truck to truck. One of us is going to have to back up, but who?

My truck is bigger than his. And it’s a standard.

I rev my engine. He backs up a little bit. I move forward the same distance. He backs again. I edge forward. I throw my hands up as if to say, What are we doing here? Are we going to cake-walk our way back to the highway? Just then the banks of snow open up and I spy tufts of grass on the side of the road. Calculating the risk, then throwing good sense to the wind, I angle the Beast’s butt into that little wedge. Pull forward. Back. Forward. Back. Until we are both facing the same direction and I am free to go.

Maybe, I think, if we had shown the same level of cooperation when we were married. Maybe if he’d conceded even a little bit, things would have been different.

But they aren’t.

It is what it is.

And I am free to go.

Stained Glass Hearts

There is no grace in perfection, no need for mercy in a goody-two shoes gospel.  It has never been our flawlessness that makes us attractive to the world.  Yet, all too often, we get caught up in the lie and end up wasting our days trying to live a ‘pretty’ life because we think it is what the world wants to see.  We forget it was our desperate need to be seen and to be loved inside our imperfection that drove us to grace and mercy in the first place.   And I believe if we listen with our hearts to the unspoken dialogue in the world today, this is what we'd hear:

We are caught up in this storm between the lightning and the thunder

Stuck out in the cold, looking in at you, we wonder

Are you guys for real? Do you feel the things we feel?

And if we cut you, would you bleed from your stained glass hearts?

Drinking my coffee, paying the bills, 

clock is tick ticking, grinding the gears

of life in the balance between living and not

a shadowed existence that keeps keeping on

I can’t make it stop

If you take time to listen, if you have time to waste, 

and you hear a life dripping an empty refrain

That’s just an echo, the hollow repeating,

Oh my heart is still beating, but it’s hopelessly broken these days

Broken, because you hungered for perfection,

tried to run from our rejection,

hiding all your imperfections and the sins

that just like us, have left you shattered,

living lives so bruised and battered,

when that’s not what really matters in the end

You’re not perfect anymore

But you are beautiful,

with your stained glass heart

I answer the phone and smile right on cue, 

go through the routine and not give a clue

that behind the façade, inside of this shell, 

hangs a life in the balance between heaven and hell

and these days just living

Feels like pure hell

You can have this heart God, ‘cause ghosts don’t need them, 

and blind eyes can’t see, and 

I just can’t keep on this way anymore.

Sure, my heart’s beating, but it’s hopelessly broken these days

Broken - because you loved without condition? 

Because you loved without ambition

and without the inhibition of your fears?

You have poured out oil of gladness,

given joy and taken sadness,

let your brokenness shine through the pain and tears,

Sure, you’re not perfect anymore

But that makes you beautiful,

with your stained glass heart

Broken scarlet letters in your life is what we read

Black and blue, cling to the bruises that you thought we’d never see

Gold and glowing, in the fire, like a swiftly burning sheet

of flames – we’re glad that you aren’t perfect anymore

because now you’re touchable

Now you’re reachable

Now you’re beautiful – with your stained glass heart.