Don't Talk To Me

Don't talk to me

If you haven't asked me

about my story


Don't talk to me about coming back to God

If you haven't listened

While I tell you

About the nights I cried and begged Him

And knowing.

If you don't know I dropped my daughter off at school to

Cross the street to the church and sit in front of the cross on my knees

And ask and cry and promise and wait

Five days a week.


Don't talk to me about restoring my marriage

If you haven't listened to my voice break

When I said I would love him more the day we divorced

Than the day we married

If you don't know about the night he said the words because I couldn't

And I sat on his lap and cried and cried.

If we didn't feel your arms around us as we stood in front of the judge

Ok.  And proud of the way we were doing things

You have no clue.


I wish you wouldn't pray for me

If you never held my hand and prayed with me

If you didn't hold me while I shook,

If you didn't watch me meet god.


If you don't know, if you never asked,

What it was like to wake up brokenhearted to be alive the morning after I overdosed

On your lies.  The morning after I chewed and swallowed the words

That said she would be better off without me

And washed them down with the poison in the way you smile

Knowing everything.

If you didn't sit in the ER with her that night

Or wait at home with him


You are not my father or my mother or my friend.

You don't belong in this beautiful creation I call life

This crazy, wonderful, hard, incredible thing I embrace, naked, with all my heart

If you haven't asked.  If you haven't listened.


I have a story to tell.

I went there.  And I came back, we all do,

With a story.  It's bigger than you imagine.


Don't talk to me.

If the only story you've heard is yours.

If you haven't asked and you don't listen.