Just Try to Imagine

Poem written in '06, about the love that was cultivating between myself and the girl I was dating at the time (who I would go on to be engaged to and later ruin). More about letting God define love, and respecting that.

Imagine this
Even though you couldn’t possibly
Know what it was like
To have to sit in that place
With no lights on
The only comfort a God
Whom you doubted you believed in
And who couldn’t possibly believe in you.
But that’s why you’re here.
You’re supposed to be doing His work
But the only thing you seem to be doing
Is sitting here alone
Not really making an effort
To connect with anybody.
Not even allowing yourself the time
To have the chance to connect.
Then you step out of your shell
But that step, is more like a leap
Because you end up
Miles away
At a place you don’t even know
With someone who means nothing
Yet you claim she means the world.
But you’re back to your old ways
Making use of someone else
When you’re down
And out.
Then you see what you’re doing
But you don’t care, or even try to stop it.
Then one day, it’s like it all begins to come around;
In full, you realize that God is real
And not just real in a sense that He doesn’t exist
But real in the fact that He’s around you
And you get in tune
And you see Him
And you realize He’s real,
And all around.
You begin to follow Him
And He shows you things you hate
About yourself
About your school
About your friends
And about your enemies.
But He shows you something else
That He had already shoved into your face
And you don’t want to look
Because you know what it means.
You don’t want to leave
You’re comfortable
This is you.
“No it’s not,”
He says, assuring you this time it’s for real
So you follow Him
Which is something you never do;
At least not very well.
And it leads you to the most beautiful thing
He ever created
Or at least the beginning of that
That beautiful thing
Which He created.

And I tell you you’re currently at the start
Not because this Beauty hasn’t been realized,
Because it never takes a whole day
To recognize sunshine.
But this Beauty is more than physical;
It’s something you feel inside your soul
It’s something that makes you warm
And makes you whole.
You want to keep nurturing it
Even though it hurts you sometimes.

I hope this feeble attempt
At putting the ethereal
Into concrete
Relates, in some way
How I feel
And I want everyone to know it
For this joy is something special
And it’s something to be shouted from the rooftops
And if two things were to go down
As being my legacy
One, that I love Christ.
Two, that I nurtured a feeling
That ended in love
With one who meant the world,
And was a gift from God.

Reviews

[Rachel DeHart]

Very powerful.