Soul misses

After my father-in-law’s memorial service, I’m contemplating the inevitable misses in life, the cries for help, the absences at crucial junctures, the lack of voice – what I wish I would’ve noticed, where I wish I would have been, when I wish I could have heard another or held my tongue.  How drowning that can be!  …yet how redeeming to know God is orchestrating me.

Now that I know, I go

To places in the past I should have been, noticing faces that needed a touch, traces of sorrow unheeded, feelings ungreeted, unspoken questions seeded

To grow into ogres of thought that overshadow the truth that I sought, the love I fought for you.

Heaves of hind-sighted regrets, finding way for an undiscovered voice;

“It’s not as it should have been,” yet spliced

With reaches both ways, clarity and haze

Stillness of time bidding me stay; I cannot dwell in the powerful array

that holds in its mire.  So, I fight for you & me, as I see in new light what is becoming.

“We do not grieve as those without hope…” 1 Thess. 4:13

What “miss” in your past tries to hold you in its mire?