They say the victims of sexual assault Can be at risk for dissociative identity
 For finding them selves in fragments  With an altered personality
 Maybe that's why the separation took place within my mind Between the act of sex and intimacy
 The staggering disconnect between my spirit and my body
 The way I am two separate selves my heart and my sexuality
 I remember I thought This won't happen again to me
 Not as long as I am breathing
 So when I felt the possibility I cut off all my feelings
And he said "you weren't raped you're just slutty."
And I thought "good. I would rather be."
It's easier to be a whore than to display vulnerability.
 And I still don't know if I'll ever love entirely
I'm not sure what it requires of me.
 I would rather leave my shell than risk another violating
 I still don't know if I ever have had the real thing
Or if they were all just ghosts of the first time that someone took my choice from me.
 And I'll never forget the way that he kept saying sorry
 For affording himself the privilege of my virginity
 As if the sum of what he did could be contained in an apology
 And I said "Don't fucking talk to me." For his own protection really
Cause I would have killed him if I had had the opportunity
 And it's all passed now, I don't feel angry
It's been a while since I stopped my hateful raging.
And trying to pay them all back for ever even wanting me.
For the longest time I hated men's audacity.
 But I don't now, it's as it should be.
Men were made to love to and long for the softness of our beauty.
 I just want to know how to reconnect the broken piece
Whatever makes you turn off the hyper sexuality
 How to stop returning to the safety of promiscuity.
Because when I am willing then no can ever rape me.
And I can close my eyes and leave and wake up in the morning.
But the problem is that I lose control and sex becomes self harming.
Sometimes I just go away and leave an empty body.
And when I do she always tries to kill me.
 They say secrets are a prison and the truth will set you free.
But I've always preferred to live this battle silently
 I never give much thought to what people are perceiving
 I don't really mind if I'm interpreted as easy
 For me it's never been about anything but the grieving.
and I don't have much emotional attachment to what my body's doing.
It feels like my spirit and my physical have been existing separately.
And I don't waste my time trying to analyze their activity.
 And so maybe I am finally asking What it's like to give love freely
 How to stop departing, and mentally disconnecting
 Choosing to exit and constantly uninhabiting
 The wretched way in which my soul keeps dispossessing
 What was rightfully mine from the beginning
 What I should never have let a coward steal from me.
 I want to know how to live inside my body
 Without the enslavement of the triggers and the haunting nature of my memories.
To come to terms and process what I can't stop reenacting
Hoping to find a way to end the endless hurting.
Hoping I can prove that I'm immune to victimizing.
 But my biggest fear is that I'm to blame. the author of imy suffering.
That what should have stopped with two men on cocaine
Has spawned into my destiny
 That I have manifested this destruction of identity
 With the hate I held inside and the way I was unwilling;
to stand up and find my courage and finally face acknowledging
 That eight years of my life went by and I just stayed in hiding.
 And I cannot disguise the ugly truth within my sexual history
 more men and more pain won't negate the trauma that I'm living.
 And I'm trying not to spend my life in sexual purgatory
This disconnected world of dominance and slavery
 where I am wrestling with who I am inside and who I am habitually.
Because sexual disconnection To me feels like safety.
Cause I don't claim the choices that my body keeps on making.
And I know I shouldn't live like this but I've never had much bravery,
I wrote my body off long ago, it's my soul that I'm protecting
 Beneath a facade of simply never caring.
Disguised in a lifestyle of willing immorality.
 deep down I know no one has ever known me.
That I will always feel alone because my safety is isolating.
 And I ask myself if maybe The risk of getting hurt again outweighs the pain of feeling lonely?
And if I should learn to see my physical self as more than temporary housing.
And learn to finally own her choices as my responsibility.
And connect the severed pieces of my fragmented identity.

The hem of heaven

I've lost track of time again. It's been happening constantly since I got here, this is the second time today in fact. He keeps telling me it's because I am imagining time, in fact we all were before we arrived. He says we've always been here and we also never have. I roll my eyes when he says this. His crinkle into laugh lines and he grins. “I never took you for a surrealist.”' “You used to have a better sense of humor.” He replied. This place changes us. Sometimes right away, and for others it takes longer, but it's not quite the same for anyone. Some get accustomed the moment they arrive and they cross the threshold into the court room. One glimpse of the throne and they break into song or dance, or sometimes acrobatics, or occasionally even spoken word. Everyone always enjoys seeing what the newcomers will do. At first I thought the excitement must die down after a certain point since the new keep coming in by the hundreds daily, but each one gets just as big a welcome as the next. When I stepped in and the light from the podium touched me I thought I was going to be consumed and I felt my throat began to close and my vision go dim. I was suddenly a well springing up in a desert of dry bones and a river and the wind that touched the weathered wastelands and sang in the trees on the day of Hosanna. I was the way that the songbirds could not contain their joy at sunrise and I was the rolling thunder in mourning of all those who had fallen. And I was also me, as much of myself as I had ever been or ever would be. I thought I wept forever at His feet but he as he reminds me constantly “forever is a moment and always and never.” “Besides, it wasn't any longer than anyone else does.” He stated as he distractedly tugged at a curtain on the towering window before him. It gave way and burst into a blooms of honeysuckle stretching up the cavernous palace ceiling. I thought it would be different here. I had pictured everyone in white robes with wings holding hymnals and standing up straight in never ending rows. I wasn't prepared for the creativity. The dancers, the acrobats, singers, speakers, marchers, painters, they never seem to stop creating more art. No one grows weary of it or runs out of ideas. Yesterday I watched an army of paintbrush wielding artists climbed the north tower and painted it in all the shades of red we had ever known in the old place. He joined them for a while and the crimson bathed the expanse between the palace and the sea in warmth as the sun set over us. I stood now at a window facing the stretching open fields that give way after miles to sandy beaches and then reach to crash into the ocean as it's waves dance in and out, to stroke the shore. Its not unlike the ocean we knew in the old place, except that its musical and alive somehow. It's movement is a dance and a symphony and it performs day and night in the presence of the tremendous Palace that we call home. The castle is too large for the words that we knew in the old place. I asked Him what it was called and he said it's name is “Joanna”. “Why?” I asked. “I knew a Joanna who was like this palace.” He said quietly. “I thought of her when I set the cornerstone.” “Is she here?” I inquired. His gaze met mine and I caught my breath. “No. But she will be.” The singing is getting loud again as I wander quietly down an empty hallway. I can hear the roar of laughter from the crowd in the court room. They have been dancing since dawn and everyone is ecstatic with excitement and energy. I don't know how many days I have been here. It may have been yesterday that I first arrived or maybe ten years. I can't tell anymore. Many of the others cannot remember the day they arrived or the old place or where any of were before this. It's as they've always been and always will be here with Him. I asked why I still remember and others don't, and why the longer we stay the harder it is to recall who we used to be, and why some of us have grown so accustomed to this place that they've begun to look like it somehow. “No one is told any story, but their own.” He said softly. “You're just quoting Clive!” I said angrily. “Clive quoted ME!” He retorted. It doesn't matter though. It doesn't matter who we used to be or what we used to carry with us. When we step into the light of the courtroom for the first time somehow all the layers fall away and what is left is a brother or sister. The way someone is your brother or sister when you are too young to know what anything is and all you know is that the warmth of them sleeping nearby wards off the dark shadows cast on your bedroom floor. And if they took a bite of your bagel it would somehow be less offensive than if a stranger did it. I love the evening when the air is heavy and sweet from the music that's been sung all day, and we all pour into the massive amphitheater and stand shoulder to shoulder and begin to sing in unison, each our own song and each our own voice, deafening and somehow flawless. He tells me we are trying to make the roof collapse, and one of these days we'll get it. I walk further down the deserted hall, serenaded by the sounds of the crowd as I wander deeper into the palace. I have never managed to explore the whole thing. He says I'll never find the end of it and even if I did, I still haven't seen the all the grounds outside. “Besides,” he said through a bite of apple, “I'm always adding to it you know...” In the old place it would have mattered that we spend so much time together. Others would have been envious. It doesn't exist here though. We all have as much of His attention as we need and it never seems that we have to wait. He says it's because there is no waiting and there never was. “I'm as much with them as I am with you.” A few days ago one arrived that I had known in the old place. Of course we all know one another here and there are no strangers but I recognized her. She had been so lonely. I watched as she stepped through the tremendous doorway and I gasped as she screamed with laughter and sprinted into the center of the room and toppled into Him at the foot of the throne. They lay on the floor shaking with laughter, the sound filling the room. Her voice was melodious as she chattered to Him, her gaze fixed on Him singularly. I watched them all night as they never tired of talking to each other, hand in hand as the celebration carried on. He has a way with the lonely. Somehow they cease to be what they were and become what they've always been. I sound like Him now. Hysterical laughter breaks my solitude as a group goes sprinting by me. They are playing tag again. This place has a way of bringing out the kid in us all. I keep on walking deep in the palace halls, it's endless structure unwinding as I wander into it. Time seems to stop and go on and on all at once. It's peaceful. In the old place my mind would have begun to nag if I had stayed too long in one place. Meditation would have given way to boredom or worry, or distraction but we don't have those things here. The stillness is a heavy blanket that settles over you and hushes the nagging. His voice is always heavy in the air, the whisper always tenderly filling the atmosphere. “come.” Always calling us closer, His presence filling up the space and shutting out the voices of the old place. At night when the stars are out it's even louder and when I close my eyes more of my memories give way. I lose a little more each day of the weight I used to bear. “There you are.” His voice breaks my silence. “I've been looking everywhere for you.” I smile as he approaches. He's dressed in a costume again. “Performing?” “I was a smashing hit, I tap danced.” “Flawlessly, I'm sure.” He moves closer to me. His gaze finding mine in the dimly lit courdoor. “The song is almost over” He whispers. Tears fill my eyes and slide down my cheeks as I fight back a sob. “I don't want to leave yet” I choke. “You never really leave you know.” He says warmly. “But I never was really here, was I?” I say through my tears. “Perhaps not...” He says as the palace walls begin to fade and the marble floor beneath us begins to fall away and hand in hand we tumble back to reality. “Perhaps you aren't here yet,” He says “but you will be.”

Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to the man I'm proud to call my dad. My early memories of childhood are punctuated with moments in which I would hear keys jingling in the metal door of our home and I would rush to see it open and yell “Daddy's Home!!!” as loudly as my voice would allow. In the foggy recollection of over two decades of time I can still see his face drift in and out of my memories, happy to see me. No one ever had to teach me to be excited when my father came home from work. It was a natural reaction to genuine delight. His presence brought a sense of completeness to each day as he came home in the evening. Then before bed he would sit down on the living room floor and I would clamber over to his side and empty his pockets. Pens, change, screw drivers, pocket knives, billfold, five dollar bills. The change went into my piggy bank and I would draw pictures of kittens and dragons and hearts and smiley faces all over his feet with the pens I pulled out of his pockets while he watched the news. The man who opposed tattoos had many a leg piece in his day. For practical issues of wanting a sandwich or a new set of colored pencils it was best to approach mom. For difficult and unlikely long shot requests dad was the go to. There was no other feeling of triumph and invincibility like the sentence “Dad said it was okay!” And that's how I became the proud owner of a kitten, the happy visitor of a theme park and the owner of a rich and extensive, fantastic collection of classic literature. Years later a therapist asked me if my childhood was happy trying to analyze and carve out the cause and effect of the person I had grown into as an adult. I couldn't speak, my words caught in my throat. My childhood. My childhood was the most beautifully imperfect collection of human experiences that a person could ever desire. Like the rise and fall and finely crafted intricacies of a symphony. She asked me about happy memories. I saw myself bent in half giggling on the floor playing legos with my older brother. I felt the way I had ran as fast as I could in the backyard behind the church and felt like I was flying. I heard the way my mothers voice was the happiest sound I had ever heard in my life. I relived the adulation I felt when my sister would talk to me at night when the lights were off. I felt the way that sitting atop my oldest brothers shoulders felt like the safest place in the world; and there in the center of it all was this intangible feeling that rested in my relationship with my dad. There it was in the midst of the flood of happy memories. My dad had loved me so much the weight of it had been staggering at times. And somehow I always knew. I knew I was the apple of his eye and the constant reminder of the weight he was carrying. That I, the little girl who adored him from the bottom of my heart also stirred the fear and doubt and responsibility, something I would never understand until I had children of my own. That me with my stirred up passionate ways and rebellious will and questioning mind was his to hold and carry and sustain. And he did. I just didn't know it when I was a child. Perhaps one of the biggest regrets of my life is that I didn't always give my dad the credit he deserved. It was so easy with mom. She was so affectionate and warm and gentle and practical. But as I began to grow and my identity took shape I directed my resistance at my dad. He became the object of my wretched unbending questioning of authority. A quality I was undoubtedly born with not a product of environment. I was unfair. A tiny framed, loud mouthed little girl with a penchant for testing limits and exploring the depths of boundaries. I wrestled endlessly with who I was. I demanded an answer. I demanded validation. When I couldn't fill the void I revolted and poured the world into it. I would overcome and confront my demons or die trying. I never knew how to live peacefully and process practically. It always had to be a storm. It always had to be chaos. I couldn't stop. I wouldn't stop. Sometimes I frightened myself. An existential crisis is unsustainable and to live in one as a permanent state of being is unbearable. I waited to see what he would do, what he would say. The little girl who greeted him at the door was long gone. I stood planted on the cusp of losing myself with middle fingers raised to the world and rage in my heart for all the questions I could not answer and all the pain I could not process. If there is a loving God, He is asleep or dead I said. My dad asked me questions and told me stories. He spun long tales late into the night and told me about books he read. We watched black and white movies and he asked my why I insisted on smoking. He asked me to stop and I said no. I waited for him to ask me what was wrong with me. How I could be so selfish and hateful. I waited for him to throw me out of his house. I waited for him to hurt me back for all the unfair things I had said that I didn't mean. I waited for him to tell me I was a failure and a disappointment and not the daughter he had raised me to be. After all he had given me everything, a home, a family, the opportunity for a private school education, a job and everything I had ever asked him for. I repaid him by getting pregnant and shamelessly flaunting my animosity for everything I had been raised to believe. My persona immersed in a flood of rebellion. Months passed and a weight settled over my life for all the questions still unanswered the heaviness of the strained relationship. On my wedding day he walked me down the aisle and told me that he loved me. I was perplexed and went away to start my new life. My oldest son was born and as I looked into his face for the first time I was awakened inside. A slow and painful shift was set into motion and I felt the ache as my belief system began to crumble. The enraged and vindictive destructive nature of my heart began to give way to make room for tiny feet and little baby giggles. I began to imagine my dad holding me as a baby. I began to wonder what he had dreamed for my life as I now held my own child, my hope, my legacy in my arms. My sons face stirred the depths of my identity. I felt myself yield to the pull of his needs. I felt myself formed by the shaping of his life, his heart, his perceptions. I wondered who my dad had intended me to become. The ever present questions that had never left me alone began to unfold and this time I didn't run and resist. One night I called him and told him that I loved him and that I wasn't angry anymore. I no longer yoked him with the sum of the struggles I hadn't been able to bear on my own, and he forgave me. We hung up and I was on fire. I would never be the same again. I started to get to know my dad. My mom told me that the years I had spent fighting with them he had hardly slept. She recounted how he had wept for me and lived in fear that I would take my life. He wasn't wrong I told her. I was crushed beneath the tidal wave of revelation that he hadn't stayed up until the dawn hours for all those years for himself. I began to see my life through a different lens. My head and heart ached. He sent me presents and told me he was proud of me every time we saw each other. He adored my son and told me I was a good mother. I looked forward to seeing him every time I came home. I have great parents, I would tell people. I went through a divorce. I spiraled down, down, down, down, down. My grief was an endless ocean and I stopped swimming and sank into it. The big and beautiful dreams of legacy and purpose and hope that I had begun to see unfolding in the years since the phone call seemed false and unattainable. I sat in my parents living room surrounded by family friends as they prayed for me in this difficult season. I felt my dad's hand on my shoulders as he said that he believed in me and affirmed my genuine desire to do what was right. True to my hypocritical wretched habits from so long ago that had reared their ugly heads in the wake of the split, I was planning to sneak out and get drunk that night. I wished I was dead. The moments passing were agony. Time moves in slow motion when you are hurting. I heard my dads voice talking to me when I became a parent replaying over and over in my mind at night. “I believe He will make you the mother of a nation” My kingdom had fallen. I was only the mother of regret. I wandered in my dejection. It only took a few months for me to get pregnant again. Once again down the road I'd walked that had led to so much hurt. I dreaded the inevitable questions I knew I would have to answer. I couldn't bear the thought of disappointing my dad. I called him to tell him everything, bracing myself every minute for irrevocable consequences. He listened calmly and as I came to the end of my recounting the details of my mess he said “All right.” almost cheerfully. He told me he would help me in any way he could and that he loved me. That he believed I would overcome it all, and be okay. And that I was a good mother and he loved this baby already. There was no rejection, no shame and not an unkind word. Only limitless love and grace poured out on me in a moment in my life where I needed it more than anything else. There in the wake of tremendous failure I found I need no longer fear or doubt or question that his love was unconditional and wonder if I could lose it. I began to see that his constant adoration for me had never disappeared, simply slipped out of my line of sight for a time as my gaze had been fixed on my own self rejection. I began to feel the glorious dreams he had dreamed for me. I began to fight the lies and anger and refuse to swallow them anymore. Every time the hopeless feelings tugged at me I would remind myself that my dad loved me whether I sank or swam. If I fell he was going to catch me and that's just the way it was. Some people have told me its too bad we didn't always have a good relationship and I have to respectfully disagree. The way our wounds have scarred and healed is a powerful bond that is stronger than it ever could have been if the break had never happened. I, the girl who had questions, could never have been satisfied with hypothetical promises. He earned my endless respect by walking me through the valleys of my torment and never leaving my side. The way that a good father should. His love is concrete in that it is supported by the beams erected through years of steadfast love. I shudder to think of all the times I should have lost my life with my reckless wandering. But then I remember the pained hushed prayers I would hear in the morning as he got ready for work. And the atmosphere late into the night thick with the presence of petitions rising to heaven, laden with intention and determination. Sometimes I wonder if he felt all the suffering with me all along. If maybe he was carrying the burden with me all the way just out of my line of sight. Just one room over, holding me in his heart while I wrestled with my doubts. Believing he would live to see me overcome while I questioned if I would make it another day. I think my dad might have loved me more than anyone in this world ever has. The mighty man of God who weathered the storm of my soul, never relenting through ten years of trouble. I see it now in hindsight, my mom was the lighthouse her presence the never failing beacon that reminded me of home and safety and hope. But Dad was the buoy far beyond the shore straining to hold me above the waves until I found my way home. My father and I are tremendous friends. I can talk to him for hours and he is the most dynamic and exciting conversationalist. He always knows exactly what I mean no matter how abstract and complex the concept. We love to share ideas and explore the endless possibility of life together. He is one of the most satisfying people to talk to in the world. Sometimes when I start to feel afraid I just call him. And he tells me all over again that I am strong and I can do it. My dad makes me feel like I can do anything and like there is nothing out of my reach. Like as though all those hopeless, helpless feelings that used to own me can't even touch me now. Now his dreams have become my dreams. He has a heart to see all people thriving and full and at peace and the glory of the Lord descend onto the earth. He dreams of honoring his king with all he is for all of eternity. My life feels electric and on fire with purpose. I have two sons and I am raising them to carry on the legacy my dad built up in me. And when the earth shakes and quakes and comes to claim what I have planted I will stand steadfast on the foundation that my father laid for me. I will see my children overcome whatever life throws at them and arise, splendid and hopeful and determined to seek after the kingdom of God, for he has prayed these prayers over them, in faith and humility, the way he did for me. I will raise my family as a testament to the goodness of the man of God who fought for me against all odds. Many people will only ever know him as a funny man in a cowboy hat who enjoys a good conversation. But only a privileged few will ever know the man who if he cannot save you, will take your hand and go with you. Sink or swim, win or lose, for better or worse. I don't know what lies ahead, only that I'll never walk the road alone.