Poem for 5th Sunday after Pentecost Mark 5:21-43

My heart is beating so fast

Pounding at the walls of my chest

As my mouth goes dry

I still remember sitting there

Across the polished

--but professionally messy desk

of one involved

--in the human struggle

--for life

I knew before it was spoken

Somehow I knew

But with the last thread of hope

I wanted to hear

--what

the medical profession

in all of its high tech helplessness

had to say

and as the words came

I shuddered stoically

With reality

The reality of what I already knew

The room spun that day

In thoughts of what if

And why me

And I was angry

At everyone who walked with a smile

And the God who created them

I screamed

screamed and cried

For days

Until brokenness overcame me

I lay in restless sleep

Dreaming

Of what could have been

I screamed and begged at God

In Prayer

Hoping beyond hope

That the stories I had heard

--somewhere

were true

and as others had been cured so might I

but I knew

somehow I knew with same depth

as I knew

--before I was told of this invasion

into my body and soul

that his would not be for me

restlessly

--night after night I tossed

in almost sleep

dreams tearing at my every fear

one night

walking through a crowd of people

who excitedly stood there

backdrops

in my nightly excursion into hell

I saw Him

Looking very much like no in particular

But I as drawn onward

Feeling again

--a flutter of excitement

as I fought my way through that crowd

all focused on Him

falling as I was almost there

managing somehow

--only to touch

--a thread hanging there

--lifeless

as I drifted back

from dreamland

to sleep deep and restful

now undisturbed

by the reality of my illness

I awoke

To my Lord standing there

In Glory

And taking me by the hand

This Prince of Peace

Leading me

To a new world filled with Glory