Don't Get Comfortable

There is this one Shawn McDonald song that has haunted me recently. Whenever I'm alone, walking along somewhere enjoying perfectly good silence...it pops into my head. To say it's a catchy little ditty is an understated understatement. "I need you" it cries out in my head, breaking through my focused concentration. "I cannot do it all on my own" it responds. Over and over it starts, breaking my whole thought process away into pieces---invading my brain. It's a song with such presence and this undeniable rhythm permeating through every thought I try to conjure. It wraps me up in it's momentum and drags me along for the long haul.

But of all the songs to have a presence in your head I could go for far worse. Over and over it tells me that I can't do it on my own, take my hand God, I need you, I cry for you...I can't do it alone, it gently reminds me. It's this promise, between a man and god. A silent shout. I see this song as a conversation. One that could be held without any sound. Honesty in it's simple expressions. No hesitations.

Then like a whisper it fades out on the winds, as I'm brought back into life by stunning reality.

It's been a while people. The few who read, but mostly me. I haven't had an outlet for anything...a dangerous situation to put me in, one might say. Against all that I am when people have asked me recently: "how are you?" my brain would shut down. Some robot somewhere was responding for me, mechanical, dry...lacking in all forms of warmth. I would start to come through and this automated program would rush me away on a conveyor belt knocking the wind (and words) right out of me. Afterward I would twist around my words, writhing with the pain that I have become such a creature, created in the aftermaths of morning after morning of continuous monotony.

I want my brain back! To become this is crazy for me, I am the real answer guy---and all you're getting is this half-assed response I give a hundred times a day with no variance. Someone has switched my brain over to filter, and only a trickle's coming out now.

"I'm Fine." my robot answers...'but I'm not! I actually feel like crap AND I struggle to get up every morning knowing the joy has been sucked away like my energy as I deal with you people, YET AGAIN!' I am screaming inside, taking all the force in my body to make some sort of sound but nothing is coming out. I just won't tell you that, because that would be wrong to say, or inappropriate. My voice is becoming smaller and smaller as the conveyor belt whisks me away into it's dark endless motion, shrinking into the horizon line.

Why must we always be appropriate. Screw appropriate. Some people make me screach inside. They bring up something that I haven't felt in quite some time...a rising force, a vigorous passion knowing there is something better coming. Something somewhere inside me is waking up after a ridiculously long nap...and it's getting right to work. It's showing me things I've forgotten. It's reminded me of things I've ignored. Take my hand it tells me. You can't hide from me, it offers to my ear with gentle kindness. This thing, this voice...it knows me in ways no one else does. I recognize it, it's voice soft and familiar like a good old friend. I think this voice might be god again.
My lips are dry, parched as if they haven't said anything in quite some time. Just like speaking for the first time, it's very hard to say.


I need you, God. I force out with all the gravity of the world.