Redefinition

Oh all those words I should not know, those doctors wrote on me.
Swell up and from their syllable, won’t let me get to sleep.
The sun will start late and clock out early,
And I’ll drive around and wait for it.
Fallow familiar roads, emptied of every memory,
under a sheet of silence and unmarked snow.

Then idle in some parking lot, smoke half a smoke and ask,
St. Boniface and St. Vital, “preserve me from my past.”
Repair our potholes, prevent plant closures
And if they remember me at all.
Make them remember me,
as more than a queer experiment,
more than a diagram in their quarterly.
Make them remember me.


-The Weakerthans,
Hymn of the medical oddity


I have a problem, but the tricky party is that it never looks like one. It’s like I’m so close to a new revelation that will tell me some secret and bring some light into my disarray. So I take one more step. Not realizing which direction I’m going, as long as it feels closer to my revelation. I keep moving, seemingly directionless, maybe even walking in circles. I get so enthralled with the searching, that I easily overlook the obvious, or simple, or sadly the beautiful answers that are calling out to me. Like an addict, that has his seemingly insatiable itch. He would spend all his days scratching at it, fully aware that it can never be satisfied. Then one day a real cure is offered. The only problem is that he is so used to the scratching, that he would rather itch then not.

The searching process keeps me soft, but I never want to exchange the truth for a lie. As priceless as these steps have been to me… the doors they have opened. I’ve opened up, and changed in so many ways, accepting that I’m often a late adopter on some things that I formerly judged.

So part of my problem is my recent enlightenment. Only really enlightened to the point of some self awareness of dysfunction and longing, but not enlightened enough to really know what to do about it… yet coming to grips with life’s tangles is beautifully liberating.

… Like that street I always avoided. Now I enjoy it. I’ve come to accept my mild infatuation. In fact, I’m okay with keeping it for a while. Even though I don’t know what to do with it.

…Or all the awkward connections of people moving in and out of our worlds. They bring an insecurity as you have to figure out why some left and others have entered… and the followings that those changes bring. The people we compare ourselves to as we replace some, then we ourselves get replaced.

… Or most of all, coming to grips with damage caused by this silly process of falling in and out of love. Getting hurt by someone, then turning around and hurting someone else, then watching the net expand as the process repeats itself.

Sometimes I feel like I’m a doctor and at the same time I’m a patient lying down on a bed in a hospital as I examine myself. I examine my patient, and ask him questions about both past injuries and illness. I answer the doctor questions by describing my lingering symptoms as well as new pains. I give my patient my diagnosis about the things still healing and my conclusions as to what these new symptoms might be. Drugs are prescribed and the appointment is adjourned.

I’m pretty accustomed to this process, but recently I’ve found a major flaw. I make a lousy doctor, and wholeness can only come from one physician. Life brings life, and healthy things grow. I’ve been arrogant. I’ve tried to fix myself. Awareness is a vital step, one that has brought indispensable change to my life. However, even if I do not always act on it, I believe that there is one author of life. He is light, and loves to heal. Through Him, love brings true revelation to light. Always healing, always restoring, redemption is still the same price it has always been, a simple declaration of your need for Him.

I need you now.