focus

Oh, the struggle.

It never seems to cease.

Those demons from the past.

The ones that pop up unexpectedly at perfectly innocuous moments.

Dragons and deserts and memory of famine.

It hurts.

And I wonder who to trust and what is truth and where my heart is safe.

And when I am reminded of all the bad, I find myself asking – does it weigh more than the good?

And I have to push repeat on the mantra that is being drowned out by the demons marching to their own beat.

I don’t know how to redeem the past.  (Although I’m struggling toward that ideal every day.)

I don’t know how to change it.

Nor how to put it entirely out of my mind.

But I do know this.

(Although I must be reminded when I fall to forgetting.)

I know this.

The past is not my present.

The past is not right now.

I live Right Now.

This is all I have.

(It’s all any of us have.)

And I think it just might be the only path to free.

Ah, such a tiny focus.

The world through a pinhole.

Blacking out all around that doesn’t lead me to safety.

That doesn’t lead me to the cross.

That does not carry me back to salvation.

That strength,

that precise focus,

will not be found in my brain.

And it will not be found in reverse or by looking in the rear view mirror.

That focus is grace.

And may it all remain as it is.

Focus on the step in front of my foot.

On the now.

And in that beautifully painful focus,

I hope  to find freedom.