Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Touch (the sense of touch) (08/05/10)
-
TITLE: Back In Touch | Previous Challenge Entry
By Nancy Bucca
08/10/10 -
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES
Don’t touch me. Stay away. Leave me alone to rot inside the confines of my inner room.
I say that all is fine and shut you out. But I’m hemorrhaging from deep within, afraid that if I tell you what is wrong you will pass me by, too frightened to do anything to help me. Either that, or you will poke me and prod me and increase the pain.
How is it that you who claim to know the Great Physician’s manual like the back of your hand recoil from performing the surgery that would heal my heart?
Your best medicine is but a bandage, a tiny seal upon the surface of my skin. It provides no balm of Gilead to calm this weary soul.
You study every day to show yourself approved, yet you faint at the sight of blood.
As for you who dare to touch this sin-sick man, among you stands no doctor I can trust to sew my mangled bowels back together.
Like Peter you doze meekly in your gardens, shutting your eyes to the corpse behind the curtain. Then, once compelled to face the gruesome facts, you pounce upon the victim zealously, cutting off his ear with scripture’s sword.
I dare not place myself beneath your rusty scalpels, or expose to you the shrapnel in my heart.
I wish it didn’t have to be this way.
I don’t really want to be ignored. Not really.
But it’s safer just to pull the curtain shut than to accept rejection that I loathe.
And so I place a mask upon my face, in a bold attempt to cover shame.
I close my ears to all I know is holy, I close my mouth to food I used to love, I close myself to people I once cherished, making myself a stranger to your touch.
I’ve been out of touch for along time now.
My flesh has wasted into skin and bones. The meager scraps of junk food that I nibble are not even fit to feed a pig. I’m starving in my body and hungering for love.
But when you try to offer it I shrink into my gauntness, disappearing into that realm of nothingness where Never never ends.
I wash my hands at every turn for fear of germs, hoping in some way to cleanse myself of the foul contamination that has ravished me within. But no matter how many times I purge my body, I cannot find a way to purge my soul.
I hid my sin so cleverly that you never suspected the true reason for my leanness and why I pushed you from me all these years.
I hesitated to reveal this secret because I wasn’t sure you would forgive me - or could forgive me - for immersing myself within that squalor of filth that I now so desperately abhor.
But then it dawned on me, ever so slowly, that you were not the frauds I once thought you to be. I saw the love you had for one another, and despised the violence with which I had misjudged you.
And so I now humble myself at your feet, begging to be held in your arms.
If you can somehow find a way to reach within yourself and embrace this bleeding leper, I know I will be healed.
I have turned from my sin, and I am starved for your affection.
Please. I want your love. I want your touch.
Because I’ve been so very out of touch.
Please accept me. Please forgive me. I would do anything to be part of your family again.
Sincerely yours,
The Prodigal
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
If you died today, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? You can be right now. CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.
