sacrifice – wordskeepmesane

Sometimes I think I could stay here
All quiet and thoughtful up on this mountaintop
If only I could remain undisturbed

And left alone

THEN what a difference I’d make

And then I remember that I have you to thank

For all my best and worst rising to the surface

You help catalyze all my grandness and terribleness

And all this facing’s what makes a person whole

Without your love

Without you to love

I’d just be all face

And no facing

Void of depths

Too heavy on shallow heights

Thank you for all your yous

Meeting all my me.

And please, God, may my me (with You) liberate their mes as much as they’ve saved mine.

Expenditures of loving these all that fills right up:

Love’s liberation

When the children came, “thrill” left

Replaced by care and caution and love’s breadth

Not always safe: the pursuit of safe.

Lots may die in the wake of hesitate.

But ah! That is not all there is.

Before them wonder was a largely private (selfish) affair

After them – with them, because of them – I am expanded

Expanded in delight not just my own, but in delight in theirs

What a gift! What a gift to be enlarged

And stretched beyond my own thin skin

These trenches and crumbs are not beneath me

These are where the real life is – the full life is

Forced outward love stretches all my womanhood

– anyone’s personhood through parenthood –

Battle waged I am forced to reckon with these, with me

To find that my self’s death is the truest liberty

To be present and free from my own way:

(Not just in order to indulge another’s whim)

– But to provide what’s needed –

This is liberation: realizing wholly the love within.

So to find I’ve grown – and am willing more still –

Becomes the delight of sacrifice – true love’s thrill

To find that before I gloried in the small

I’d venture I knew Glory not at all.

Tag: sacrifice