When You Are Wrecked

by Tamika Eason on April 8, 2013

…You don’t need clichés. You need someone to cry with you.

…You don’t need notions like pick yourself up by your bootstraps. You need someone willing to carry you.

…You don’t need indifference and denial.You need devotion, a sweet Spirit in the place.

…You don’t need to find ways to numb the stabbing pain. You need to feel nail scarred palms. 

…You don’t need fingers pointing and finding fault. You need a faith bigger and stronger than your own.

…You don’t need expectations. You need only extravagant grace.

…You don’t need agendas that aggravate your wounds. You need blessed assurance Jesus is yours.

…You don’t need to cave to despair. You need to become a sound sleeping Daniel.

Because there are no times more desperate than these, when all the wrecked ones must know that we are never alone. Lord, be the lifter of our heads…

 

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When You Need Courage, Chase It

by Tamika Eason on March 12, 2013

When she sits at the piano, her back is straight and eyes closed. A track plays and her fingers brush white keys without sound. There is no sheet music, only memory.

Her eyes flutter open and this is how we begin. The music is under her fingertips now, moving and climbing. She wildly creates melody and I chase after her keys.

I realize this is what I want: A life chasing.

And here is this intimate moment like the one Solomon had. And God invites me to a secret place in Him. And I finally know exactly what I want and it feels like the breadth and width and height of His love.

And the woman I’ve been withers. Her pangs of insecurity and that tapestry of self-condemnation–thick and eloquent in its stitching, the way she fights to keep eyes turned away–all disintegrates.  No more moving one mediocre step at a time.

My voice cracks. But she doesn’t stop caressing those ivory fingers. I smile, because I remember what she said the first day: Beautiful music is unafraid.

She is a psalmist and I love a pen and we both feel the pangs for this music. This chase, it is vibrating through the vocal chords now. And the beating in my chest is loud in my ears.

As a girl I dreamed of singing and I read as many books as I could find. And it all makes sense that God had this planned all along.

David sang and Solomon wrote and I decide I will do both. Unafraid. Because it feels right and good to chase what I’m meant to be.

 

 

 

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How to Have a Happy Ending

by Tamika Eason on March 11, 2013

Momma tells me on a Friday. All in one breath, she says he will spend the next fifty-five years locked away.

She spoon feeds a few more words: Beaumont, geriatric unit, a seven digit number.

The real shades of grey aren’t erotic and exciting they are cell blocks where no one knows your name. And no cares that you will be fifty-five this year come April. Simply day after day, grey.

I’m angry that Momma still carries his suffix hyphenated, hanging on. I wish she wouldn’t. When I hear her say it proud like it belongs stitched to the rest of her I know we’ll never be separate.

We are holding the phone, barely holding on. Because you can’t bury hurt deep enough, long enough.

She is sorry for me. I am sorry for him. Who knows who he is sorry for.

We are, the three of us, a DNA bond and that breaks any prison sentence. And this is the story we live today and all the tomorrows that will come behind. 

And the only man whose blood is like mine is a drug addict and pimp and sex offender and a prisoner. And how do you ignore your blood line?

A friend gives me an article on grief. I smile, gaze back out the window to the clearing of trees where the homeless coddle on warm days like this. Strange how I want one of them to be him–free and here.

I don’t have the heart yet to read the article.

Pain is easy to escape if you want to lose the glory of peace. And the songwriter was onto something: that many things about tomorrow I don’t seem to understand.

That is peace for now. What he will eat, or drink, or wear, or cry, or be buried–those things that are pulling at the corners of my thoughts, I release with a breath. An invisible acceptance of today.  

I fold the article in fours, tuck it away. I need to enjoy the happy of not having the end of this story. Because some endings are too big for our todays.

**We’ll get back to dreaming with the team tomorrow! Thank you for having this testimony, I could not bear this load without you!**

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When You’re Ready for a Real Breakthrough

February 6, 2013

The first boy I liked didn’t like me back.   I’d opened my mouth, smiled the way I saw other pretty girls do. I did my best to hide those crooked teeth pushed way out and over. And the lines etched and curving across my tongue. I chanted it every day after that: don’t open up. [...]

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Looking for Another Level

January 29, 2013

She’d pulled her shoulders back. The way I do when I feel small, insignificant. Maybe I got it from her–the way her posture can push her on to the next thing. The faces of those women waited. I cleared my throat, straightened the hem of my dress, and pulled my shoulders back. I’m doing it [...]

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Try Asking for Something Small

January 15, 2013

“Turn.” She does–whirls like a princess. The purple dress inching up her leg instead of lapping at her ankles. She won’t throw it away; she refuses the thought. “Turn.” On cue: she tips to the right, putting her weight down and whips her body in one gust. This time she makes a full circle and [...]

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The Truth You Need to Know This Year {There is More}

January 8, 2013

The day is long. Sun lines dance on pavement, and I pray that I’ll have strength to tell you. Courage come, help me utter the one thing that I’ve held, hoped, heaved up to Heaven. I slipped it in quiet on Christmas, right under those pointed lights. And all the mystery of the manger fresh in our thoughts–the [...]

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