We all have a story,

Be it painful, joyful, or forgotten.

We all had dreams of our futures,

And they were probably discarded.

We grew up, some of us too fast,

And threw our cushion forts, storybooks, and training wheels behind.

We stood on our own two feet for the first time,

Found out that life wasn’t all freedom and magic,

We cried and laughed and drowned in our problems.

Some of us never regained a breath of air.

We ventured out into the unknown, scary, dark world of reality,

And some of us drew our heads back in terror.

A few brave souls threw their heads back in sheer delight,

But the pains of life soon cut them down.

We noticed other people, liked and disliked many,

Quick to judge, roll our eyes, and criticize.

We were enchanted by a few lucky stars,

Praised their virtues and excused their faults for the love of their company.

We curbed the tongues of the vile snakes that poisoned our theology,

Whiplashed our children and corrected us for speaking out.

No one taught us how to survive on our own - we learned from experience.

Life is not a book, it’s a hard and tricky test,

We fail, give up, and quit, we never do our best,

The raindrops fall down and clear our vision,

We walk through a storm and come out renewed.

We celebrate life as it rolls up and crashes down,

We dance to a different tune even when the world falls apart around us.

In this universe of broken kingdoms we have one hope,

A hope in the only One who created change but never changes,

A hope that we shall not live alone.

We shall cry oceans when life is unfair or damages our fragile telescopes,

Or when dragons threaten to steal what’s real to our eyes,

But we cling to the hope of the Ages, the Rock of generations,

Because the darkest side of hell on Earth is the far side of Heaven.