Self-Doubt

I wrote this sonnet for a course I was taking at Valparaiso University in the fall of 2013. The poem was due shortly after my fifty-first birthday, and I was feeling overwhelmed by the love and kind words of my dear friends. Their birthday messages on funny cards and loving cards filled me with gratitude, but they also left me with a foreboding sense that I am not worthy of such kindness because I am riddled with faults. I have been blessed my whole life with loving family and friends, and I can’t imagine where I would be without them.

Self-Doubt

Friends share, bring joy, bask in presence –

Tears, strength, laughter, simple essence.

Slow sweet stories, thoughts, yarns of past

Words soothe, hands hold– hope here at last.

 

Warm space, at ease, joy, tease, group prayer,

Fierce army joined to fight despair.

No stress, no judge, be you, I’m me,

Don’t fear, stay here, safe place, be free.

 

They see in me all that is good

O’erlook the dark black core that could

Shatter my soul without their love.

I grasp their gift from God above.

 

Friends make me want to be their dream,

But then I would be what I seem.

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