Dianna Buchwalter

  I beckoned you to come near, but my way didn’t look like what you wanted.   The lights of the night drew you in, Pulling you into dark corners.   I waited.   You searched for acceptance   in people with empty promises and hollow souls.     You longed for love, not realizing it was mine you needed all along.   I waited.   You turned toward me in moments in need, in fear but each time, you pulled back thinking the distance was too great to cross.   I waited.   The end of your rope seemed to get longer.   Still, I waited.   Your choices led to pain. Things once whole began to fall apart.  What you held onto slipped through your hands.   I was there. I waited.   Then, gently, I opened your eyes to what you had been chasing And your heart to what had been chasing you all along.     And when you finally stopped running There I was,   exactly where I had always been. Waiting.  

“Do my eyes look Chinese?” is what my nine year old asked one Monday morning as he stumbled his way to the kitchen table. Before sitting down, he dimmed the overhead lights until his eyes were fully open. About that same time, my daughter made her way to the bathroom and said “don’t turn on the lights, I can’t see.” What an oxymoron that is. We all know light is needed for most of us to make our way around in the dark.  But for some of us, we have been in the pitch-black so long it’s all we know and what we’re use to. If we stay there, it will leave us blinded by the light and obscured to the truth of God’s plan for our lives. I was in that sunless, somber place for a while.  My later teens and early twenties were spent in the wrong places making poor decisions.  I remember being the life of the party when in reality there was no life inside me at all. I had heard the truth of Jesus and yet I chose to turn away from Him. Like I did, there are those, who reb...