The Empty Vessel...Am I

There is no gentleness to my glance...I lack a certain softness to my tone...there is no tenderness to my touch. A mechanical pretender....am I.


At the age of 12 I had whatever natural tenderness I possessed raped and beaten right out of me. And I will attest to the fact that it doesn't just "grow back". So in regards to tenderness, sensitive caring touches and the like, I found myself but an empty vessel. Over the years I filled that void with all sorts of "goodies" that I could manufacture for myself as a direct result of life's circumstances: Anger, Hate, Fear, Resentment...just to name a few. 


I lugged those bastard, rogue emotions around with me for 30 odd years and in the process they slowly but surely siphoned off bits and pieces of my SOUL. I was the disappearing MAN...and right before your eyes...and mine too!


So much of my day to day life these days is to search and seek for those missing pieces of my soul. It of course is a SPIRITUAL Journey and ultimately it is ultimately to touch the FACE of GOD that I seek. Though I still hurt and the depth of that hurt is impossible to accurately explain...so I have a long way to go, though I know that HE will indeed be there waiting for me when I arrive.


For many years I grieved for those lost feelings such a tenderness, gentleness...always accepting the fact that I would always be ultimately...even in recovery...that EMPTY vessel.


But in late January of this year something profound happened...I met Jesus on my own personal road to Damascus...once blind, now I SEE! And I...the beaten and raped ONE, now have become HIS...and whole again.


Lately...I've noticed a new sensitivity toward others and I'm not exactly sure where it came from...It 'tis a combination of love and gentle caress...and at the same time I no longer cling to the bitter feelings of resentment and hate that marked so much of my previous everyday feeling toward others and toward life itself. No...Those feelings, along with the aching void they once inhabited have been replaced with a new found ability to feel for others...this new emotion, one that I am only vaguely familiar with is...TENDERNESS.