Thudding Heart

In the silence I hear the clock tick. In the stillness I can feel my heart thud within my chest. In the growing darkness faintly I can see my chest pulsating to match my heart. I feel almost too tired to move. It's this time of year again when there is so much to do that I feel as if I should collapse under the weight of it all, and all I wish to do is simply rest. But I cannot, for one pause may undo all the hours of sweat and work, pain and sleeplessness. My eyes are tired tonight. Not as if they are soon called to sleep, but tired like a man awake with insomnia, a man whose mind can never let him rest. My mind tries to tell me again and again all the ways I am not good enough. It tries to parade my faults and imperfections in front me, over and over again, like the repeating of a nightmare. So many struggles, so many fears, and they always seem to surge back like the waves of an upset sea. Some moments it's all I can do to keep treading water, it's all I can do to gasp for one more breath. Though, in the end, no matter what struggles I must face day to day-nightmares, past or present-no matter what storms my mind and life may be hurling, my soul, the deepest, truest part of me is lodged safely in the palm of my Redeemer's hand. I shall never be plucked out, I shall never be put to shame.