Run to You

Dear person, I dare not name,

                My finger has the lingering smell of pipe tobacco on them which I’m not sure you would enjoy because you would know I’m about to smoke. I don’t know how you would feel about the habit, but it is a vice I have come to enjoy. There are far worries vices to have, and we both know that to be true. I haven’t lite my pipe yet, I want to write this letter to you while it sits on my heart. The rain outside follows the marching of the thunder, and they are begging me to watch it move on by, but at least, I’m sitting here writing to you.

Take from my statements what you will and what is to come in this letter, also take from it what you wish, once my letter is sent, it is out of my hands what it means to you. I hope with my weak skills that I can make you understand where I am coming.

                I know the words I’m about to write are going to cut deep and pull out the emotions I’m not sure I’m ready to face or say, but I have no choice in the matter. This pen may sit in my hand, but the angels are the ones would will it to write. I’m the tool for which they wish to use in the moment.

I’m not sure how much I want to show you my state of mind right now. I’m not sure I wish to tell you how much of my life has crashed around me, but a lot of what I’m feeling may come out.

I used to write this little story in my journal about a giant trying to hold up a crumbling temple, but he couldn’t stop the stone from falling. The more he put his strength in the walls, the more the temple seem to fall, and his friends, the Drunk, and the Poet laughed at his efforts. I never knew who I was in the story.

Just like the story, I wrote a while back about the Knight looking for the King who was missing in the land. The Knight found the King holding a crying man because the man lost everything he had in his life. Who was I in that tale? The Knight? The crying man? Or both at once? I know, I was not the King, for he is the Lord.

Right now, I might be the man and the giant. Let me explain and please forgive me if my handwriting is rough, my hand is shaking at the moment. I don’t think you know how much I have fought to stay in school, to keep going. You always told me how important school was and no matter what I needed to finish it. When I got my GED, and I sat at your table waiting for the gifts you gave for the deed, you said to me, “I don’t pay someone for something they were supposed to do.”

I’m sure the others would have wept over the statement, but I agreed with you. I had failed in high school for foolish reasons. I had made mistakes which I must pay for it and getting my GED was one of the ways of fixing what I did. I never blamed you. I never needed to because you were making me stronger. I got up from your table and went straight into college. I told myself I was never going to fail like that again.

And I fought for eleven years to finish college. I gave up so much to keep my vow to you. I started to grow older watching life pass me by and told myself over and over when I was done with school then I would make up for all the time I missed. I would do the things I have always wanted too but couldn’t because the school was standing in my way. I had to give my all to my studies because my mind is flawed. It would take me far longer to win at studying than the person beside me because the temple in my skull has a faulty foundation.

Eleven years I gave to this task only to be told the cracks growing in the temple will keep me from finishing. I could spend the next year or the next ten still trying to win at school life, but there is no way of telling when I will finish what I was meant to finish.

My house catches flames, and everything started to burn, but I wasn’t lost in agony over it. In fact, I sat on the hill watching it all go up in the fire. I was tired of fighting against my mind and watching everything pass me by. My soul couldn’t bear to pick itself up to ask another person for a little money to help me to the next paycheck. I didn’t want to turn to a friend again telling them I don’t know what I’m going to do to eat, because I had to give everything to my studies. I was tired of being a bum and not a man, and the fire grew higher.

After the wood turn black and the smoke started to dance away in the sky, I was left with the question, what now? I had all the stories I had written beside me, I saved them from the fire. I packed them under my arm not sure what to do with them but started to head down the road.

Maybe, I can give them to someone for cash? Maybe, I can make a living selling my stories? It won’t be an easy task, but it is a task I could give my life too. I could share my stories with the world and hopefully, tell a story which could help someone with their dream. Some kid who is sitting in a class listening to all the people around him call him dumb or stupid but dreams of being an artist. Maybe, I could hand him one of my books and say look at my life, I have failed, been broken, but if I could do it then you could do it better. Maybe, right?

On the road, I meet the King, and He smiled at me like I was a lost child coming home to

Him. My heart leap rushing up to Him with all my stories saying, “See, see what I did? Will you read them?” I sounded more like a child than a man before Him.

The King sat down on the hill with me and started to read my stories. He smiled up at me, and with that smile, I knew this is what He made me for. Not to write stories for the world but to write stories for Him. It is by His blessing that my stories are written, and He is the one who enjoys them the most.

Now, the question is, does the King wish to share them with the world, with you?

I don’t know. I can’t tell you right now. I want to say yes. I want to desperately believe He will share it with everyone, but I don’t know. I am not the one who gets to say yes that case. It is up to the King what will happen to these stories. I write them for Him and Him alone.

I wish I could tell you I don’t have my doubt about taking a leap of faith here. I’m jumping into His hands hoping and praying I’ll land on my feet. I wish, you could understand what I am doing, but I know it won’t make sense to you until I’m able to take care of myself. You might think I have failed again and I am a failure, but I haven’t, and I am not.

School is a great place, and I knew, if I stayed there, then I would never have to take this leap. I would never have to run to the King. I would stay in school because it was easy. As long as I was working on my studies, fighting every day to make an average grade, then you won’t see me as a failure. If I stayed in school, I didn’t have to fail at being a writer or an artist. I could always push those dreams down the road until I was ready. If I stayed in school, I didn’t and couldn’t have made money to take care of myself because my mind is flawed, my studies took up so much time. If I stayed in school, I didn’t have to grow up, which now I see was making me a bigger failure than I could have ever been.

The fire had to happen. The flames pushed me out of my comfort zone, and now, I have to either take a leap or stand still and become nothing. Once again, it is the act of fire that had forged me into something new.

I’m scared beyond belief about what is going happen to me. I sometimes believe I have failed again. I’m once more a drop out who’s life is going to end up nowhere. I am a fool trying to be a writer because who’s ever heard of a dyslexic writer before? I’m going to end up poor and working a dead-end job, I hate, always dreaming of something better. I’ll have to give up my craft because I have to eat.

These are the fears running in my head daily now.

I look back at the pile of brunt wood telling myself I can rebuild, and the King says,” No come with me.”

I don’t know if my stories will ever bring me money or grace your hands. I don’t know if I’ll make it as anything more than a dropout, but I know, I’ll try. And I know my stories will and have graced the hands of the Lord, and what more could I ask for?

With a Handshake,

Chase