When I was in grad school for Pharmaceutical Chemistry, I was unsure about what I should be doing for a living. One year on New Years Day I was wandering around at Maple Woods Conservation Area praying about it and I felt like God told me to kill myself. This was before I was ever diagnosed with a mental illness. So I tried to sit out in the woods on this totally cold day with no coat to be an obediant person. Eventually I came to my senses and went home and warmed up. A lot of Christian people since then have told me that it must not have been God’s command because it’s not consistent with a nature of love and mercy. I think it was just my brain reacting to stress.
For a long time after that, I was unable to pray. I would send prayers up but I was afraid to try to get any ideas or commands coming back down. I’ve been slowly able to move beyond that place in recent years. Then I met Rod, right at the time my artist career was starting to take off and I felt a strong ability to impact a lot of people with my words.
Love Makes My Tears Stronger than My Fears
Scared of greatness descending upon me, my shadow growing beyond the size of my heart
Places beyond the possible, darkness exhaustible yet I pulse through to the other side
With sheer determination and will and my inability to let myself doubt or feel.
Somehow I’ve been balancing beauty, speaking for the silent, merging words into excitement,
Building bridges for the violent, raging facewards through thunder and lightning
Reaching out into the rain with the strength from my chasm of separation and pain
Burned my hand on a lightning bolt and still held on tight through years of iron control
It’s this way I kept on walking with the Lord even after I gave up talking and took my sword
Against myself when I wanted to die but the Creator didn’t stand by the six times that I tried
Till I found furious fiery acceptance that we are all still meant to be
Evidence in this world of things unseen, things hoped for can still be believed.
And with grace of a mustard seed I built a new life of friends and dreams.
Hopes becoming redeemed, my growth forthcoming a new me
Strong enough to let my guard down to receive love from another human being
This man I found in the streets of KC sent on an adventure just to find me.
More than I ever asked for imagined by a Creator I’d ever known this way before,
Completely random interlapping overarching linkages never guessed this could happen
A man of strength and joy, generosity in his spirit and curiosity you can’t cure it,
This person who reads my face like a website, gives me grace from a dead fight,
Opening feelings I never trusted, turning my stone wall to a walkway through a rose garden
My heart breaking into riotous bloom, higher connections are safe to resume,
Greatness can’t find me too soon.
-Corinna West
Best Wishes, Corrina. I knowyou are morethan likely out of bed, yet. Make sure the size of the initation and weigh fit the stamps you apply. A faux pauh done many a time. And that they sealed properly. You’d be surprised the last minute things I’m sure we both have heard.
Going through a time and its fabulous your time right now. Enjoy. (We’re an Olympic family with a cross-runner on my son’s wife side of the family.) Cheryl
OH, can I submit the “Tears” POEM to our local weekly, THE DOVER POST?
[...] did an awesome poem for him that I need to get video online soon for. Our wedding was a wild and crazy party. My cousin who [...]
This is wonderful. I hope you will come to Wisconsin and tell us about your wedding on the bicycle. It’s a story of personal transformation that I think will touch people. Enjoy.
Yes, I need to get this poor blog updated. I should be through the worst of the crunch to build Connect Power next week and have more time for that.