Strength to Prove

Does your Home decide for you a Fate–

A predetermined course that doesn’t ask you

It just Takes you

Gives you

Holds you

And Drops you

Before you’ve opened your eyes

Before you’ve opened wide and cried.

Clichés are your Novacaine

‘Bad things happen to good people’ and

‘God gives the hardest battles to His toughest soldiers’

Because it hurts too much to apprehend

How unfair life can be

How cruel life can be

And how unstoppable and how crushing and how easily ended and how delicate life can be

Is it all arranged?

Assigned to you on your Street

The Street you never chose

The Street that didn’t even choose you

That first night you snuck into the dark

That first night you snuck into the danger

They called you for initiation, you answered.

Reluctance pushed aside because you thought you had yourself to prove.

To prove to those Streets

To prove to that Backyard

To prove to Life

To prove to your Home.

The dark of that night saved you

That same dark that swallowed you and spat you back

You watched from afar, a life spinning out of control

Until that life spun to a stop. 

But you had been watching all your life.

The life that was lost was lost long before

The life that was saved was yours.

Clarity.  Tragedy turned to motivation.  The death of a friend not wasted.

You are the Phoenix

Who has opened his eyes

Who has opened wide and cried

Unashamed tears

Tears not wasted

Tears from every pore

Disputing determined destination

Fighting fixed failure

You took it all

You gave it all

You held it all…

And you’ve become strong–

Strong, stable, self-aware, self-sufficient

But strong, strong enough to drop it. 

Strong enough to prove yourself to you.

And your motivation is in that same Home

With that same Backyard

On that same Street

Living a Life that you will make new.