your heart the father's heart

today a little church boy yelled out from across the gym, "do you have diabetes?!"

his friend said, "my dad said it's because he ate too much ice cream."

I don't know who they are and I don't know how they know but for a split second I remembered a place I don't like going back to:

a young boy with a bowlcut,

stuck in the restroom fumbling with a blood test meter

I wonder if the kids thought it was weird seeing someone in the stall not using the toilet

E5, E5, E5. three strips wasted because i never pressed the needle hard enough into my skin to draw enough blood

one time I dropped the vial on the floor and it bounced once but shattered on the second fall and goodbye insulin for one month. I didn't eat that day.

skipping shots and skipping blood tests because I didn't want them to wonder why I always left for five minutes at the beginning of lunch

pretending I was ok while I was slowly killing myself because I was too ashamed of who I was.

all because a voice told me "you're different but not in a good way"

not sad enough for sympathy

not known enough for care

tired of explaining to people that I didn't get diabetes because I ate bad I just got... unlucky. I don't know which reason is worse.

sick of being sick so instead I boarded it up and turned the lights off and just just just,

told them to forget about it.

told myself to forget about it.

to forget about me.

just leave it alone

just leave me alone.

-

what's up here?

nothing.

can't be nothing.

nothing you want to see.

I do want to see it

fine, nothing I want to show you

why?

because, its nothing.

do you know we can do with 'nothing'?

-

you take nothing, and you make something,

then you take something, and give me everything.

I'm starting to get it a little:

why I feel these things, sometimes these terrible, painful things and sometimes these indescrible, joyful things

why I have disease and sweaty palms.

I'm starting to get it a little, because you are turning on the lights.

and you are making me feel things I don't want to feel, or feel things i try to never feel again.

because when I find myself in the dark again with panic attacks and weeping and falling falling falling, you turn on the light and stoop down to hold me and say

this is my heart. I know how you feel and I am with you.

you let me go into the darkest deepest places and still, just to show me that your light is there still. that you are there still.

and God I have been in dark places and now Im starting to get it a little.

because when they feel the things they don't want to feel, the things they have been trying not to feel

I can step down into the dark with them and feel with them and hold on to them in the desperation and tell them to wait for the light

because God has already been here my friend, in this dark dark place, and there is already a lightbulb in here.

this is my heart for you, I know how you feel and I am with you. and He,

is with us.

- -

for a split second I remembered this place.

and how God was there, too.

I remembered the place

I remember what I felt.

but I did not feel those things.

I looked back at those kids and yelled back

"diabetes can't stop me from eating ice cream"

and we laughed.