faithfulness is when i realize there are two women in the world and begin to entirely ignore the second, investing instead all my time and energy and attention and affection and concern and myself in you and your happiness and sacrificing myself as often as necessary to try to assure you of your value...this also applies to my hobbies and my friends and my interests and my comfort and my privacy and my desires and everything else that is me, all becomes subservient to my Lord and to you

without the two of you there is no more me, either before or after

you are the breath when i've been gasping
and the cool breeze when i've been sweating
and the gently swaying hammock when i've been sleeping
and the spring shower when i've been parched
and the solid rock when i've been drowning

i have forsaken all other shelter
and foretold our dying words
and dreamed of blue skies and the wind in our hair
and i saw the horizon fade
in a red and orange sunset
through curls of gold

as if i was sane, or innocent
as if i was snow covered baby bottoms on white sheets
as if i was a lamb on a truck on a road to the abattoir
as if i operated on the same emotional and intellectual level as other people with real hearts and genuine concerns for their family and friends, possibly even their neighbors or their country, maybe, in rare cases, the world itself, both human and un-human
as if i knew how to cry
as if i actually wanted to see you come home safely with our child so i could witness your smile because you really love me and you really want to love me and you enjoy our reunions

i am tired of living with this heart of stone, alone, in the dark, searching for more but refusing to turn to the light where i know all the answers lie, i am tired of this stone tied around my neck, weighing me down and making my back ache, i am tired of endless days of resistance and stumbling every other step and seeing the prize snatched from my tenuous grasp each time i begin to close my fingers...

break me on the stone that is Christ, break me to my component atoms if necessary, just take this burden away and give me a real heart and i don't care if i cry all day every day just make me so i can feel genuine and unsullied emotion and know that it is real and good and true, so i can know you love me and so i can know i love you and my neighbor