I've tried to trace my trouble back to the day where it all started. Like footsteps in my mind I've followed it back. Hoping somewhere along the way I'd eventually stumble across that very first print. Like a crater in the dirt, old and barely recognizable. A hollow hole that once held the sole of my feet, and some other forgotten memory. My first moment of compromise. The one decision that sent this life of mine spiraling into the whirlwind of chaos it became.
I haven't found it yet... that footprint. Sometimes it feels like I've been looking longer than I've been living, all the while wishing I was living instead of looking. It's a crazy ride-- life. The years pass but the view doesn't change much, people just get crazier and you get older. Until one day old and crazy just don't mesh anymore. That's when you find yourself fading into the sunset trying to make sense of your days.
One thing is certain, I've seen a whole lot of days but not a whole lot of sense. Maybe my path of compromise just stretches back farther than my memory... hard to say. But I reckon, somewhere, a lifetime ago. Back when a lifetime felt like ten. My childhood skin took some scars, and it was those scars that started me down this road. Maybe that's where it starts for all of us. When our innocence is peeled back like a wrapper on a stick of gum, and all the wrong roads start feeling right.
The older my skin gets, the more I miss that child. That piece of me I let the world chisel down to a tired lump of scars. Used, abused, mislead. There's not a lot of footsteps between childhood and the grave, and the few there are usually tread through hell to find their way. I may have been through hell on the back of a child's eye, but I'm still walking just to catch a little glimpse of heaven before these old eyes grow dim.
The truth is; the heaviest scars you bear in this life are worn on the skin of your inner child, and the only way to forget their sting is living the rest of your days like the child you never got to be. So as much as you can, live without worry, love without ceasing, laugh without reason... and don't let the world that ruined you, hide your face from the Father who loves you most. Because there will be days you even doubt Him, and when those days come, just have the faith of a child.
