Known

I wrote this because of how Psalm 139 helped me realize God's intimate knowledge of and care for me, which in turn helps me to trust Him.

On the beach, at dusk. I hold your thoughts about me in both hands and let them sift through my fingers, the breeze slight and not too cold, people walking over shells and seaweed and soft white, the waves a constant rhythm that breathes over the shore, in, out, in again, a pulse sent to erase footprints and make the packed sand look like the water, rippled.

I cannot get away from you.

Why do you care so much? You know when I stand and brush off your thoughts and you saw when I sat down, you know my own thoughts, ones that will stay as silenced feelings and ones that might form words---healing, hurting words. You sit beside me and you're in the canyons of this ocean and in the farthest lines of sunset, lines that stretch into black and then are exchanged for faded gray, pink, and finally the burning orange of morning, lines like my pre-printed days in your book written before I was brand new, woven in the secret place and hidden until you read aloud the first page, the first day of my life.

Don’t let me let go of you.

Tramp through this heart, cut a path through these ruins, sift through these piles of complicated sand and find that garden you’re looking for.