What?  A break in the silence? Crazy. 

Just wanted to give an introduction to the poem below.  I have been on a journey for the last year or so.  It has been a journey of learning to understand at an care about at intensely personal level the hurt, joy, or sadness that another person is experiencing, and wanting to share.  It has been a journey of realizing the need to "go there" with someone, to really get behind the plate and see where they are batting from.  It seems to be an ongoing journey that really doesn't have and end in sight, but demands an increasing amount of vulnerability, and openness. 

The more I grow and look, the more hurting people there seem to be.  This was written because a lot of people I care about are hurting right now for one reason or another.

What Can I do but Worship?

What can I do but worship? 

The God who allows pain?

What can I do but submit?

And sing with eyes tearstained?

Who else have I in heaven?

And who else on the earth?

Who else have I to cling to?

Since You Lord gave me birth.

So much life you gave our hearts,

So much with which to love.

Yet our hearts are filled with hurt,

And silence from above.

Ashes seem not large enough,

To lie on with our pain.

Nothing to wrap our mourning,

For burlap seems too vain.

And yet You Lord allow us,

To know such bitter hurt,

We struggle on with our pain,

While our cries seem unheard.

We wonder why our Father,

Would allow us to feel.

When love and joy fade away,

And only pain is real.

We wonder about the nights,

Crying alone in fear.

While thoughts whirl of pain that is,

Or what may soon appear.

Again the question wonders,

So often, yet again,

Where is Your grace and mercy,

When our hearts hurt within?

Then inside, Your Spirit speaks,

With groanings beyond words,

In stillness I understand

That all my prayers were heard.

What can I do but praise You?

Wisdom behind the pain?

Grace discounts our harvest plan,

And gives the crop more rain.

The mercy of a burden,

That seems too much to bear,

Needs another hurting heart,

With pain to meet us there.

To weep with the one who mourns,

To understand their pain.

To rip open our own hearts,

To feel and hurt the same.

If I squint my eyes just right,

I can see beauty there.

Though at times tears cloud my view,

I know your mercy’s near.

Teach us Lord to open up,

To love and laugh and feel,

Embracing pain as mercy,

That in Your time You’ll heal.

Until then I’ll lift my hands,

And glorify Your Name,

The wisdom of Your mercy,

And grace that fits our pain.

© Ethan Martin, 2008

Well folks, the time has come for an update.  Just because I am trying to put off studying for my second to last final exam.  Talk about senioritus...  it just doesn't get better. 

The good news is that I was offered a job as a design engineer last week in the area I had been hoping for. Actually it was the job I had been hoping for.  I am starting the first week of June.  Between now and then I need to find an apartment or something, (with Rebekah's help, because after our wedding in a few months she will be living there too), change cell phone providers, buy some furniture, maybe buy some sort of car, and a lot of other things.  Yikes.  Now I am going to go to bed for a while.

Graduation is Saturday, and I can't wait.

An Easter Poem

                      There beside the road a cross,                        

                Near a large tree now all twisted.                  

                      A memorial to a life that was,                        

                            To a life that once existed.                             

There an object of sadness,

Among a few lonely flowers,

A reminder of the frailness of life,

Of the shortness of our hours.

Rightly so, yet mistaken,

As we are we so often find,

Our accepted memorial of life,

Was where Life with Death intertwined.

For there stands along my road,

Another large tree all alone,

A place where a Life as well passed away,

And my bitterest death was known.

But in my place Another,

On that cross He gave His last breath,

I live as He lives and now the cross stands:

A memorial there to Death.

© EWMartin 2007, All Rights Reserved

Well friends, I would like to introduce everyone to the woman that I love and am now engaged to be married to... Rebekah

The happy occasion was this past Saturday, the last day of my Spring Break, March 10, 2007

Please visit her here