Do Your Duty
Every citizen has a duty to perform. Some of us choose to fulfill that through military service. When someone learns I am a veteran, they often say, “Thank you for your service.”
I should probably reply, “It was an honor.” But I don’t. I pause.
Because truthfully, I feel a mix of embarrassment and frustration—embarrassment that I don’t quite know how to receive the thanks, and frustration that such words sometimes seem to serve as a kind of inoculation, as if my service relieves others of the duty we all share.
What I wish I could say is this: “Don’t thank me as though my service absolves you. Do your duty too.”
Even better, I would love to hear someone say:
“Meeting a veteran reminds me that I also have a duty to my country, my community, my neighbors. Here’s one way I’ve been living that duty… Thank you for reminding me.”
Because service, after all, was never meant to be mine alone. It belongs to us all.
Into Your Embrace
For thirty-two years
I kept the secret of my grief.
Poems unwritten,
words withheld,
a silence so heavy
it bricked the walls of our life.
.
For you,
who bore my silence
as I bore my sorrow,
you waited beside me,
through winters of hush,
through the long dark.
.
Now I write—
a voice for the dead,
and a voice for you,
the living beside me.
.
You said,
I would have loved them.
And whispered,
When I am gone,
will you remember me?
Your words cut me open
like a blade through cloth.
.
Who will deliver me?
Who will raise me
from the fall,
the fall of my silence?
.
For you,
who bore my silence
as I bore my sorrow,
let me lean,
let me lean into your embrace.
.
Let me breathe out dust and ashes,
the silence I have carried like stone.
Let me breathe in the fire of your breath,
the wine of your love,
the warmth of your body beside me.
.
For you,
for you,
for you—
into your embrace.
Grace in the Ruins
David Wilkerson 9/25/2025
I buried belief with her,
creeds don’t keep the night away)
Faith staggered, thin as breath-ing,
(I thought it too would fade).
But sorrow split the silence,
and beauty cut me through,
a goodness in the dark-ness
I had no right to choose.
Call it grace, call it love,
(call it nothing, call it enough)
What I lost returns as whisper—
(not a for-tress, just a song).
Call it grace, call it love,
(too frail to prove, too strong to hush)
In the ruins I belong.
Experience is brutal,
(but it will not be denied)
In the chamber of her dying
I heard life refuse to hide.
Belief came back as language,
a trembling in my chest.
To name what can’t be spoken
is the only faith that’s left.
Call it grace, call it love,
(call it nothing, call it enough)
What I lost returns as whisper—
(not a fortress, just a song).
Call it grace, call it love,
(too frail to prove, too strong to hush)
In the ruins I belong.
Oh, I thought the silence would break me,
(but it held me like a hymn).
What I buried rose to name me,
(and I let it breathe again).
Call it grace, call it love,
(call it nothing, call it enough).
In the ruins, in the ashes,
it was faith that learned to sing.
Call it grace, call it love,
(too frail to prove, too strong to hush).
And belief—belief returned—
as the song it could not bring.
“In the ruins I belong.”
Experience, Faith, and Belief
Belief, faith, and experience are often confused, but they are not the same.
Belief is assent of the mind—accepting doctrines or creeds. It gives structure, but can become brittle. Faith is entrustment of the heart—leaning one’s life into God, even without proof or reward. It endures when belief falters. Experience is lived encounter—moments of grief, beauty, or awe that ground us in reality and sometimes surprise us with grace.
Each on its own is incomplete. Belief without experience grows sterile. Experience without belief becomes chaotic. Faith without experience risks turning into grim endurance.
But when the three converge—belief giving shape, experience giving weight, and faith sustaining trust—we find something resilient enough to face both desolation and amazement.
For me, in the long illness and death of my wife, it was not belief that carried me, nor even faith as I had once preached it. It was experience—a haunting sense of pervasive good in a world otherwise hostile—that became the soil where faith could live.
The House of Guilt and Grief
Guilt is a funny thing. It insists on living with grief in the same house, windows shuttered, doors locked, the air thick with the smell of mold. I once thought I could tidy it up—dust the corners, polish the shutters, pretend the place was fit to live in.
But memory is not meant to be stored in stale rooms. The only way I know now is to raze the house. Let shame stand naked in daylight. Let the sun bleach what it will. Then love, and love alone, remains.
The irony, of course, is that I spent years paying rent on a place I should have burned down long ago.
On a whim... 