Life can leach the life right out of us if we let it. Drain all vitality. Leave us limp and wilted as can be.

We seek a place to feel safe, free from harm, to rest and recuperate. A shelter for which our soul’s long.

My safe place? In my Saviour’s embrace. Beneath the shadow of His wings.

Clinging close to God’s side is where I want to abide.

And all the more as society (read:government-shaped attitudes) cause me to want to run and hide away.

There is no stable ground to be found in this world. All is shifting sand. Fickle and failing.

Those with sickness, disease and disabilities are increasingly marginalised and ostracised by a society quick to point fingers but slow to lift them to help.

Compassion doesn’t often seem to extend to those too ill to work. We are presumed to be lazy good-for-nothings, until proved otherwise.

The poem below was written out of my personal experience of living with M.E, fibromyalgia and other chronic illness for over 20 years.

I wasn’t going to write today, depleted and drained as I am. But God graced me with these words on a subject I feel strongly about.

It is also written in empathy and sympathy for all who suffer and to honour International ME/CSF/ & FM Awareness Day.

‘Silenced’

My voice is weak

Silenced by the strong

While I have a soul longing

to seek a place of shelter

Somewhere I can belong

Bathe these wounds

in Gilead’s balm

Receive oil of joy

to slip away from harm

Pain penetrates each day

Its probing fingers linger

like a stubborn stain

Leaving me weaker than before

Coated in a covering of shame

Living on the margins

Broken by its borders

A limp-ragged doll, I blink

wary eyes at society

and slink away to hide

Because I’m washed up

by its tide, become detritus

on the shore, breathless

in my distress, dis-ease

But the Healer hears and sees

Cradles His hurting child

Gathers her fragments, lost soul

Breathes new life, new hope

to restore and make her whole

©JoyLenton2015