(Source)
In listening to a podcast this morning, this poem was given.
What's funny was the slew of emotions just the name "Shel Silverstein" has given me all these years.
I believe I came to know who he was towards the end of my elementary school experience. I grasped on to his funky poems and squiggled drawings more into my middle school years. After marriage and with two kids, it was rumored that he "liked kids a little too much". This had me so upset that the copy I had of his The Light In The Attic was then treated as nothing but a toy for my kids to trample on, tear pages from, and use as a coloring book...because now, after knowing this knowledge, his writings were essentially useless.
I couldn't bear to throw the book away though. And we very well may have it still lurking under my daughter's bed, the binding ripped, a chunk of pages pulled out. I just couldn't let go of how happy his poems made me...the reminder of those simpler times in life and how many of his poems mirrored that time or brought a smile to my young face. And I could tell by my daughter's insisting on keeping the book, as mangled as it is, has done the same for her.
Just a couple years ago, I found that rumor to be untrue.
How I wished that I didn't believe something wrong and false about someone so quickly. That I'm more willing to trust that something is bad about someone than something is good. How I'm seemingly more happy to have a reason to not be someone's friend or to not respect someone than I am to embrace everyone as a Child of God and see them through the eyes of Christ.
I have been on this running search to find truth, for years now. But it's been especially concentrated these last, oh, six months or so.
I struggle with this voice within and with what my mind "knows". I used to forgo everything my heart told me if it didn't go with what I was taught. For in my imperfect thinking I thought my heart, the true me, was in the wrong and an "enemy to God".
In my hopes to find truth I've had to step outside of habit. Outside of "the norm", outside of tradition. I've also had to look at everything I've known as being true to being EITHER true or not.
While I found myself, during this search, to find several things I have been told to be true that I now say I officially know, within my heart is true, there are other things that I question and yet, while that feels uncomfortable at times--to have that blanket of assurance and knowledge that held me close and kept me warm my whole life removed from me--I find peace in being here. And a happiness I didn't think would be here either.
All because of that voice inside me.
I have found that this voice gives me more happiness and peace and clarity than the things that I forced myself to "know" as truth and pushing aside that voice within that says, "Hey wait! That doesn't feel right..."
But I'm finding that this voice that speaks truth to me, that I know without a doubt is from God, is something that is being questioned by others. I know it may have others questioning my validity as person who is intently listening to Christ and His teachings. I could very well become the topic of gossip to my peers, that I'm the one that could be shunned and placed in a category of not being trusted or that I'm living a life in deception because I've let go of some of what I "know" and replaced it with what rings true in my heart.
And for that, I mourn.
But I am so happy. So in love with life. I feel Christ every day in it. I've never felt a stronger companionship to Him than I do now and I'm grateful for that. If stretching me out of my comfort zone, feeling many times without bearings in my search for truth, wondering what HIS TRUTH is for me will give me this companionship, I'll take it over and over again than to go back to where I was.
I feel I'm honoring God and Christ most when I give them my heart and follow Their instruction while being most authentically me. I am of no good to anyone, including God, if I struggle in fitting into mold that is a great one, but hinders my light from shining.
