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distant… can you hear me?
I am so uninspired tonight yet I am overwhelmed at the same time. I need to sleep – I really do. But there’s so much on my mind, yet I can’t extract any. I need a release…
Distant
by Joey Asher
Need I resort to clambering
My face dragged against the floor
Yet I barely scratch the door to your heart
What must I do to get near you
I’ve contravened myself
And denied all that I’ve held fast to
Your whispers and your scent
They envelope me like a warm blanket
Your sweet blinks embraces me
And sends me into a fury of emotions
My heart fulminates and swells
But my mind etches out to confusion
My prison is my responsibility
Locked away with masticated emotions
Unknowingly involved unwittingly
Strong only as my strongest weakness
I pine to leave my quiescence
To step into action
To prove to you that all I want is all you are
And all I need is what you have
Inconspicuously, this prose reveals much
The overwhelming myriad of sensations
And the dichotomy of which leaves me in dire conditions
Akin to an antidote-less jet-lag, time might exact her healing authority
To wait, to deliberate
It forms the leitmotif of our song
To anticipate the moment
Where I lay bare my heart before you
A relentless quest breeds dauntlessness
And an abandoned fear of mockery inspires valour
Significance is lost when a mismatch transpires
Knowledge of my fondness for you remains abed
Reaching out, my troubled heart for hire
And bruised mind laced with reckless desire
An effrontery effort would repel
Yet it might resolve to be my bravest act
The bellicose strife of battles resides in my head
Tossed between making sense of it all
And the birth of these feelings – which is harder
A nebbish would not reconcile
Being near you comforts me
Being with you is my delirium
You send me into whirlpools of joy
And you are also the sanctum of my troubled soul
I have failed in umpteen attempts
To practise my practice and to refrain from contradiction
Lest amicability be misunderstood
To guard against an indurated pursuit
Uncertainty remains my greatest enemy
Yet it coexists as my immense epilogue
A prized trophy or a cherished race – I chose the latter
But my levity defies my determination
The day will arrive
The hour when my pain is palliated
I’ll search for you and keep you close
And treasure you with all I’ve got
These words are birthed in the atelier of my heart
And they have been since the distant March
I’ve lost control of my affection for you
Exiled dangerously in an investigated unknown
It couldn’t have been as touche as this
The gravitas of the situation herein lies
When I boldly declare my love for you
Greater than my fear without you
I’d sacrifice my reputation
And have it reduced to a lumpen state
If that would draw you to me
I’d gladly be a clown for you
Rejection shuns and shuts me out
A camouflaged backlash aggresses inaction
Proving that unrequited loving from a distance
Is easier than a spurn from close proximity
My incipient hopes may vanish
But it doesn’t cease my love for you
The object of my happiness
To see yours fulfilled
Through countless dawns, moons and seasons
I’d hold on and persist quixotically
The present may gratify more than an secret future
My biggest regret would to lose you without trying
Losing three was hard enough
To squander another would be disastrously jeremiad
I will parse my motives
And overcome fatality with wayworn obstinacy
Your reciprocation may seem perfunctory
But it’s a response nonetheless
At least I have your attention
Even for a while, even for a little short while
a prayer request for good sleep.
My attempt at sleeping early last night to make up for all the sleep debt that I had been accumulating over the last weeks failed miserably. I slept intermittently and woke up at 2:30am, unable to sleep anymore. My eyes were wide open and my mind was alert. I had too many thoughts in my head and I felt so overwhelmed by all these thoughts because it was all over the place and it covered almost every single aspect of my life. It was as if my mind couldn’t and doesn’t stop working. So I pulled out my mobile phone and started typing away. I must have written a pretty long entry because I only stopped at nearly 4am and yet I still couldn’t sleep. So I tossed and turned in bed until it was 5:30am and then when my body couldn’t take it anymore, I finally slept.
When I woke up at 8am, I felt like I didn’t rest at all. Even though I went to bed at 9am!
Sigh.
My cough and blocked nose worsened when I arrived at the office and I could “taste” the mucus in my nose – you somehow know you’re down with something when you taste the “sick” kind of virus-y mucus. I made my way to the doctor’s at 4:30pm and told him about last night’s sleeplessness. And how it has been like this for some time. He told me what I had already guessed. I even googled it last night after writing the note.
I have insomnia.
And for the first time in my life I will be taking sleeping pills and relaxants to help me sleep. My doctor said that this would help to reset my very messed-up body clock. I’ll be on medical leave tomorrow and I really do hope to get uninterrupted slumber tonight.
On one hand, I’m thankful that I have such an active mind but on the other hand, if I go on like this, it will be quite damaging for my body. I’m extremely exhausted, to be honest. I’ve carried around a throbbing headache the entire day and it was so bad that I couldn’t properly prepare cell lesson tonight. I’m also preaching this Saturday. I need to recover!
Pray for me, will you? I just want to sleep well. I badly need the physical rest. Thank you.
day four – i am what i think.
HY and I had to miss the final evening service of the Retreat for an important task (more on that in a separate post) but the morning service was such an amazing spiritual buffet that it was more than enough food. These thoughts fed my mind on day four of Grace Retreat 2010 (and I feel so full).
- God may not empower you to choose but He will empower your choices; you need to quit waiting on God to prod you into action.
- It’s not what we consume that defiles us but what leaves our mouth that does; the mind is not godless, it’s what we do with the mind that makes us godless.
- The pleasures of sin don’t last forever, and the Devil knows that we’ve given our hearts to Jesus, so that’s why he is after our mind; hence the manner in which we deploy our mind is of paramount importance.
- Proverbs 23:7, paraphrased – “I am becoming what I’m thinking”. Life follows thoughts – that is why we need a resurrected mind, for attitude influences behaviour and thoughts determine future. Therefore, we ought to keep our brain strong for it controls the heart.
- Psalm 26:2 – “Test my mind” – to test is to examine so as to purge or clean out; you go to a doctor to find out what’s wrong (to fix it) and not what’s right: I’ve always believed that “judgment” is a neutral and necessary word, for evaluation.
- The mind is naturally set on the flesh which leads to death, so you should set your mind on the Spirit, which gives life and peace.
- Psalm 1:1-2 – Exercising the mind is like training the body – it takes effort! And so we should remember that memory work comes before revelation; if Jesus memorised the Word and practised spiritual disciplines, then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t or are exempted from it.
- My destiny is not heaven – that’s my destination – my destiny is to fulfill my purpose on this earth. I don’t wanna miss the whole point of life on earth!
- What am I feeding myself? All that we intake are seeds, and one day these seeds will bear fruit; my fruit will be and is determined by my seed.
- Philippians 4:8 – We should train our brain by conditioning it to think about the right things; rubbish in, rubbish out.
- 1 Peter 1:13 – We are instructed to “gird up” our minds for action, so we must nourish and feed it. As a result, the training of our thinking should lead to our acting. How? By thinking through things, memorising and meditating, as well as dwelling and pondering on Scripture.
- Digging deep into God’s Word is like a dog devouring a bone; it never relents until it goes deep enough to get all the remaining flesh, oil and the best bits of the bone; almost as if to “suck the marrow out of life”.
- Romans 8:6 – Revelation is most powerfully experienced when it speaks to your mind, moves to your heart and flows through your life.
To my surprise, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed ZA’s and JA’s preaching. They were, for a lack of a better way to phrase it, typical pentacostal preachers, but their teaching is biblically sound and to a certain extent, Word-based. Not the expository style of EC, BH or JP that I’ve always preferred, but still solid preaching. One thing I prayed and asked God for during this Retreat is to make me both a Word-based teacher and a Spirit-filled preacher.
joey asher | misunderstoodsunshinekid 