Lindy Thompson

For decades,
I have cared what people thought.
Really cared.
Wanted to be liked.
Wanted to be included.
Wanted to be wanted.
Very much so.

A common human desire, I know,
but not a helpful driving force in life,
nonetheless.

I pursued the elusive concept of cool
to my own detriment,
avoiding activities along the way
which I might have really enjoyed and possibly excelled at
because the people who participated in those activities were not seen,
by me and others,
as being cool.

I ignored the inner heart-leap of
oh, I would like to do that!
because of how it would look to others.

What others??
No one was watching but me,
me with constant commentary in my head,
echoes of the very real,
though not always acknowledged,
jumble of values within which I was raised,
with its heightened emphasis on popularity,
on fitting in,
on being like them because we were not enough.

The dread of inadequacy,
passed down generation to generation —
a substance in the water that you don’t even know you are drinking
until you’ve been consuming it for years.

But,
praise God,
good news! —
there is other water to drink.
Untainted water,
clear and refreshing,
that does not add to or alter what it finds
but washes away that which is unneeded,
allowing the original beauty to become more visible.

Living Water,
making more alive
everything it touches,
everything it cleanses,
everything it uncovers.

O God, I thirst!
Oh how I thirst!

Fill me, O Living Water!
Draw me again and again
toward your endless flow,
for you alone
give me the courage,
the strength,
and the power
to be me,
to dance and sing
before no eyes but yours,
and to live into
the beautiful self
that you created within me
and within which you dwell.

In you I am never alone,
I am never lost,
and I am always beloved.

Holy One,
accept now the humble thanks
of an intensely grateful heart . . .

and  O God,
O Love,
O Living Water —

fill me once again.