a mood ring

I wish I had a mood ring I could trust; maybe it could tell me what I feel. Identifying one's own feelings shouldn't be a struggle but for me it's all too jumbled. I feel ill-at-ease for some reason. It's like I'm on a small boat in the middle of dark deep waters stretching endlessly in all directions. It's my lack of resistance to this setting that plagues me. I have no inclination to go to the shore, to reach the land where man was made to live. That's would be too simple somehow. My oar is apathetically untouched; I am at the mercy of the current and accept it as so.

I remember seeing Rob Bell in concert several years ago. He did this one monologue about the poignant moments that make up all our lives (actually that is all of his monologues but I digress). All our lives are a series of transitions, unforeseen circumstances, inevitable ends, blindsiding moments - all of these things are happening at once. He relates these things to hallways.... "We've left one room and gone to the other. We've sat outside, waiting. We've felt pain and been overwhelmed by joy. We've all been in the hallways in one way of another, haven't we?"

What anyone else does or doesn't do isn't for me to determine. The fate of another persons behaviour, affect, mood...isn't in my hands. Laying something down is one thing; picking it up is something else... I think being a nursing student where so much is theoretical jargon and where case studies are idealized and fictional, the ability to see, accept, and embrace what is real and possible gets dampened.

Seeing that breakup, being a witness to that (for lack of a better word) dysfunction, made me see how fragile all of it is. We. You. I. All of it. Are fragile. And things might not "work out." And accepting this possibility is vital somehow to my continued ability to walk and talk and breathe...


Round is my shape.
From my face
to my bodies curvatures
Round is my shape.

Beholden is my heart.
Regardless of the future
regarding the now as a present
Beholden is my heart.

Kindness marks my disposition.
Seeing the good first and foremost
freed to laugh and smile
Kindness marks my disposition.

Unafraid is my soul.
Undeserved grace claimed me
and keeps me come what may
I am not afraid.