Poem – Age of Anxiety / Rock of Ages

In contrast to the relative silliness of my last post, I wanted to share something with a little more substance, speaking in terms of emotional weight. I was walking the other day, and it struck me that when I see somebody at a distance on the same sidewalk as myself, my impulse is to clam up and be frustrated. Maybe that’s not a common feeling, maybe it is, but regardless I find that I start fretting at the inevitable passing: what should I say? Do I smile and acknowledge their presence? Pretend as if neither of us is passing? The tendrils of anxiety creep around me even in little things like walking, and in my observing of that it birthed a poem in me, which I wanted to share. A poem grappling with an age in which everything is connected and yet the feeling of isolation and lines of moral demarcation between person to person have never seemed so…stringent. That’s a lot of talking and I reckon I digress, but here’s a poem I wrote, and I hope it encourages you, regardless of your background and/or faith 🙂

Age of Anxiety / Rock of Ages

I’m scared of you, you’re scared of me,
This age has bred anxiety. 
Hearts palpitate aloud in fits
And throats in unison constrict. 
In states of hypervigilance 
Both purity and innocence
Are cast aside for so much less:
Mistrustful eyes seek out distress. 
It suffocates the soul to think
We know so much and yet we sink
Into these solitary holes 
Of fearing other frightened souls. 
The truth is that I’m terrified
And what I most need clarified
Is…Jesus, can you heal this heart?
I want so desperately to start
Embracing everyone I meet,
Not fearing strangers on the street!
The one recourse that I can find
Is You, oh Lord, please intertwine
Your spirit so within my own
That I trust You and You alone. 

It’s hard believing that we’re here
For more than pain and hurt and fear
And feeling ever constantly 
This crippling anxiety…
And yet we are. Our Father’s heart
Can heal those broken, frightened parts
And make us new and set us free
From palpable anxiety! 
So, thank You Father that in spite
Of how things look You’re making right
This fractured age, and helping me
Unshackle from anxiety.