It was never a question, for myself, whether I would one day
be what, and whom, I wanted to be.
The fact had always stood,
with opportunities in abundance.
But there that day the questions seemed to proliferate.
What next to do that I hadn't already tried?
—or that wasn't so similar as to quench
any hope of satisfaction in my quest.
And, "Quest for exactly what?" I could no longer answer.
Had I ever known, or was I now just tired of the empty humor?
With no one else in the room to fill the silence
behind the questions,
The void lingered, and grew, until the vacuum pained my ears.
Is this what those others finally encounter,
those whose hope disappears for seemingly no reason?
Whose imaginations invent disaster,
their world crumbling without so much as a tremor?
Like the troubled artist, my deficit suddenly enveloped my gift.
The tax was being levied —by whom, I was unaware,
And I could find payment none.
But as I sat amidst the din of my own self-created darkness,
a turning of my attention I began to perceive.
A shaft as fine as a pencil point, yet bright as the solar core
shone into my mind, penetrating the doubt, the fear, the death.
Yet some strange, morbid preference for what was of my own construction
forbade the attention of my mind upon this shaft to glance.
And why? Was it fear? or uncertainty?
No, for my heart had long known well what my mind was demanding I avoid;
like a child in a tantrum, voicing his want,
yet wanting for more than he can voice.
So I continued my quest, searching my thoughts for answers.
But each time I repaired the superstructure of my own philosophical tenets,
This brilliant shaft reappeared, with a persistence I had never known before.
Finally, amidst my mental kicking and screaming, the walls collapsed
upon my now vacuous self-existence.
I panicked at the realization that all my answers
were really just more questions.
The one who was me had no substantive core.
I looked and could see right through him.
And in this mortifying gaze, I wondered,
Who is he? Doesn't he know? And where is his sanity?
Questions.
And no answers.
So I ran.
Like a rudely awakened man running from his burning house,
I ran in a direction I had never run before:
Into the light.
And though this path for me was yet untried,
my heart's report was that I was returning.
Returning to the One from whom I had come,
who had for so long been calling me.
The questions dissolved as I came face to face
with The Answer.
Where there had been self-doubt, there was now His assurance
That the tax which I could never pay
Has been paid in full by His priceless gift.
Amazing love! How can it be,
That thou, my God, should die for me?