In these last few poems in part one I have tried to describe the downward journey of a heart. A retreat into a place where one cannot be hurt.A flag had been planted at the very center of my heart, the very core.The flag was planted by the enemy to denote that this was now hs territory. It has been said, "show me the boy when he is seven and I will show you the man." I am not sure is seven is the age, but I know that the true essence of who I was, who the Lord wanted me to be, was lost. The core of my heart was covered, it would not be truly uncovered until years after coming to Jesus.Every one of us has a core, a pool of water at the very center of the garden of our heart, the secret place. This water should flow in the rivers of life that flows from the throne of God, but inevitably it gets cut off, isolated, through sin in its many forms, whether abuse, neglect, rebellion and so on. Many times children will islolate their pool, not conciously, but in a mode of survival. Yet, inevitably, this pool will grow stagnant until it is uncovered by the light of Christ and rejoined in the rivers of life from the holy throne. Have you uncovered who you truly are? Is there a secret pain that has shaped you? How does it manifest itself?Are you overwieght, depressed, lacking in joy peace and contentment, do you have to medicate yourself? These are all the signs of a pool hidden behind a secret curtain of pain.My fisrt ever encounter with the living Christ was when I was twleve. This would eventually, as an adult, be the saving of me although I could never have guessed it at the time. There was a particularly violent episode in my house this evening. Now, I had witnessed a thousand acts of violence by this time by a man who was losing his battle against God. One time my father even nailed our front door shut from the inside with six inch nails to stop my mother from going to church, my sister and I lowered her out the window, quite a drop for a woman who was a quarter inch shy of five feet. What my dad did not realize, and would not until he came to Christ himself, was that my mother had discovered the power of the universe. This is the power that men had searched for down through the centuries, the answer to life itself and nothing nor anyone would every persuade her to let go of Jesus. This night was different, I believe the enemy planned to kill my mother this night. My father had her by the back of the head and was punching her. She kept crying out that Jesus loved him but ths only seemed to incense him all the more. One minute he was laughing hysterically, the next he was crying. My sister was in the corner of the room screaming and I stood , frozen with fear, behind him.The atmosphere in the room was almost tangible, it was like the air had a substance, not that you could see, but that you could slice through. At that moment, I felt something come into me, from the very top of my head. It slowly passed down through my whole body and as it did, the fear left me until it reached my toes and there was no fear left at all. I reached up and put my hand on my fathers shoulder. His head swung round, he still had my mother by the hair, and I found myself looking into the blackest eyes I had ever saw. In an instant, as I stared into these eyes, I saw past them and into his soul, and there was my real father, the man that God had designed him to be, bound, chained and gagged, lying on his side. I heard myself say this "Dad, I love you." In a second I was back looking at his eyes again and I heard this voice from his mouth "I cannot argue with that." The atmosphere was gone, my father released my mother, and sat down in his chair looking shell-shocked. Now, the violence returned days later, but this encounter with the living God would help save me later in my life, for this reality could not be denied. Of course there are stages and turning points and defining moments in everyone’s’ lives. A central defining moment in my life was meeting Angie. She was extremely pretty and walked into my life when we were both 15. I loved her the moment I saw her. She was petite with coal black hair , very slim and really different from other Greenock girls. . Her mother had married an American sailor who was based on the “other side” of the water. Many local women had married Americans, although there was a stigma to this. Most of these girls were considered to be “sluts.'This of course was not true in most cases. What most of the girls did have in common was that they came from the “lower working class.” Growing up in Scotland, America was a dream , out of reach, for most Scottish people. You could actually make something of yourself in America. Apparently it did not matter how you spoke or with what accent you spoke it with. Angie’s mother had dared to dream and followed her sweetheart, after marrying him, back to America and small town Kansas. She was considered by her husbands family, who were wealthy, to be a gold digger and beneath him. It seems that America had a class system too, just not so defined or rigid. Angie and her two brothers were born and lived in Suburbia, a life only dreamt of by my fellow townsfolk. It was the late sixties and Angie was 7. Her father decided that he had to go to California and find himself, and indeed the family would hamper the search. So they were duly divorced and sent back to Scotland. Mom believed, even as she waited for the plane at the airport, that her husband would come and get them, but to no avail. She was a broken woman and lived in the worst of the projects on her return to Scotland. Even now it is hard for me to imagine the culture shock for the American kids. They were bullied and beaten constantly for being different, and mum chose one boyfriend after another who would treat her the way she felt. After one beating too many, Angies mom suffered an anuyrism. She was in a state much like Terry Shivo. She could not walk or talk or leave the bed apart form a wheelchair. Somehow, in this state, the man that had been living with her got her pregnant.Amidst the screams of the mother, and the helplessness of the children, the baby was born premature and in the breach postion in the apartment. The baby died, and mom died shortly afterwards. In order for my wife and her brothers to avoid the orphanage, the chose to stay with the last tormentor their mother had lived with, their father never came and got themChildren of the nightAs the Lord looked downOn a cold winter’ nightTwo children he beheldIn his merciful sightThey each cried tearsOf pain and distressPlease help me oh GodFrom this horrible messEach cried for their motherPlease release them, they saidOne lay broken on the floorThe other lay dying in her bedAnd the tears they criedwere caught in His HandNow forever unitedBefore God they would standThe world wrote them offBefore they beganYet the Lord had seen their painThey were now in His Hand. --------------------ENDLESS RAINThe wind it blewAnd the rain it fellEven when the sun shines brightlyIt’s still raining in hellThe days were too shortThe nights, too longPlease let the morning comeLet the birds sing their songI looked out my windowSweet virginal snowLet me lie beneath the blanketMay it never goThe snow soon meltsAnd once againThe wind starts to howlAnd it begins to rain---------------------At 16, we found out that Angie was pregnant. We were not as upset as we might have been. As long as we were together, everything would be OK. We both wanted desperately to escape our home lives. We would be great parents. We would love this child and never do what our parents had done. This was our chance. We were married just after our 17th Birthdays. We had no home, so we went to the Salvation Army’s shelter for battered women. They told us that we were their first “Honeymoon couple.” After a couple of months in there, we were given an apartment in the same place that Angie had came from. I was drinking heavily by now, which was of course normal. This was my right of passage. Oh how I admired those men who could drink endlessly and not fall over, perhaps only stopping to throw up, then returning to their business. I wanted to be just like them, and it would impress my dad of course. The baby was born 3 months premature. The chord had been around his neck and we were told he had went possibly 6 minutes without oxygen before he could be delivered by emergency c-section. He was now on a life support machine and it was the finest opinion of the staff, that it would be better to turn of the machine, but, it was our decision. Two children stared at each other, no words spoken, then stared at this tiny 2 pound , perfectly formed child, “Whatever you think is best..........OK.” Plugs were pulled right away. “Would you like to hold the baby ,” I heard in the mist. Another defining moment had arrived. I looked at this helpless child, behind his glass cage, my heart lay there with a ridiculously large diaper on. I would not touch this child, no-one would ever touch this child again. JERICHO IS BURNINGWhy do the tears that belong to youFall down from upon my faceWhy does your heart, so cold and blueRefuse to move from that solitary placeIt is safe but cold behind that wallAnd you will never know what it is to loveTo run, to leap, to stumble to fallTo soar with the eagles high aboveThe walls are high and thick and strongThey are built with tears and painI will shout and listen to the trumpet’s songThey will tumble and fall and never be againYour heart is touched by the burning flameIt is touched by the one from aboveYour heart it fades, and will never be the sameIt is engulfed and consumed in the furnace of love--------------------------Christopher was born a year and a half later. A stunningly beautiful child, peaceful and full of joy. When no-one was looking, I raised him high and dedicated him to God, even although I did not follow Him. My mother had told me that the Holy Spirit said I had “Gone into the world.” I had and I was going to survive, whatever it took. I was strong and I would not be brought down. Christopher touched at something deep within, I loved my son dearly. Perhaps...............Angie and I walked in and Christopher was screaming. Granddad was watching him while we had gone for the groceries(and a few drinks) He was peeling what seemed like Swiss cheese from his chest. Seconds before, a full kettle of boiling water had fallen and had engulfed him. He was 60% burned. He managed to survive the first couple of days and now the treatment. Because of a lack of resources, instead of being covered by a certain cream, he was bandaged every day, and every day the bandages had to come off. It was my job to aid the nurse in holding him down as they placed him in a bath of salt water every day for the 10,000 years of purgatory. No point in trying to explain to him the necessity of this. His eyes burned into mine as he screamed obscenities at me. THE HUMAN SPIRITOh brightest of the brightest starsYou shine out greatly in the darkest nightAnd all around the darkness fallsYet you do not, you stand and fightTime and again, wave after waveThe darkness assaults your soulThreatening to smash to a thousand piecesYet you still stand tall and wholeRelentlessly the scorching fire rains downAnd you are battered from every sideWeaker now, to your knees you fallDesperately seeking for a place to hideFor one who once stood tall and strongNow forsaken and lost and no more fightSurrounded by darkness on every sideYou must now flee into the darkest night------------------------------A dark night had undoubtedly engulfed me. Reality was my full-time enemy. Only when drinking or taking drugs would I find any relief. Looking back, Christopher being burned propelled me towards Jesus. On the outside one would have thought the opposite. Each time I got stoned or drunk or both, I was losing myself, piece by piece. Any goodness that may have been in me was surely and steadily disappearing. I was being eaten from the inside out. I had no idea where my life was going. I moved my family to London. This was the worse year of my life. To make matters worse, the people next door were born-again Christians. One would have to know the state of Christianity in Britain to realize just what a miracle that was. It is reckoned that only 1% of British people now attend church on a regular basis. What was the odds of moving to a house in London, with its ten million people, and moving next door to born-again Christians? We serve a big God. Often they would talk to me about the Lord. The only way I could drown out the calling of the Lord was to drink more and remain high. Every day of the year we spent in London , I got high. I had a plan. We were going to America. This was the big one. This move would fulfill this aching and longing in my heart. Surely there I could find peace and contentment and rest for a soul that could not be satisfied. Within two weeks of arriving in America, I realized that I could not out run my problems. Life was very different, but my soul was just the same. I longed to love my wife and son. The problem was, I could not give them what I did not have. I watched other dads play with their sons, hug them, tell them they loved them and they were proud of them . So simple to many people, so beyond what I was capable of. One day, completely out of the blue, the Lord opened my eyes. For the first time in my life, I could see clearly that I was treating my son, exactly the same way I had been treated. He was only seven, yet was already saying how useless he was. No matter what he did of course, he could not please his dad and had gave up trying. I was horrified to see my father in myself. The deepest horror though was the realization that I had no power over this. The problem had been identified, but how can a man love if he is incapable of it? Can one truly get blood from a stone? Of course not and that was my problem. The hopelessness of the situation led me to think about suicide, but since I believed in God, it was not an option for me. Finally, at the age of 26, having seemed to have lived a full life already, I found a church and submitted my life, my will, my everything, such as it was , to the Lord. INSPIRATIONYou are the inspiration of my lifeWhen I laugh, it is because you have placed a joy deep within my soulWhen I cry tears of joy and sadnessIt is because you have created rivers in the desertWhen I am thirsty in the place of testingI fall upon the Rock and am engulfedIn the sweet flowing waters of life. --------------------------I had a new heart indeed. I was alive and I could not believe how it felt. I could take my son in my arms and tell him how much I loved him. For the first time in my life I genuinely cared for my wife and son.VICTORYJesus Christ, you gave me victoryBefore you came, all was lost , my battle was doneYet in the depths of my despair, your light shone as if from nowhereAnd now the darkness is light and your battles wonSo I lift up your name and I lift it on highI no longer scream and I no longer cry The battle is done, the victory’s oursWe shall stand firm, until the final hour----------------------------JESUSYour love is the fire in my heartYour love is the consuming furnace of my soulForever my heart shall burn and glow in your majestic presenceI shall never forsake you, and from you I shall never partYou are the air that I breathe, every step that I takeEvery thought , every act, every deedYou are the reason that I live, and shall forever moreThere is simply nothing more that I need.(Part three to follow)
