#Living Psalm 51_Houser

Have mercy on me, O Love that holds all of who I am.
Not just the parts they call acceptable,
but the softness, the fire, the too-much-ness they tried to strip away.
See me in the fullness of my becoming—
in the scars and the survival, in the beauty they said was broken.

Wash away the shame they taught me to wear like a second skin.
Scrub off the whispers, the slurs,
the hands that pushed me out of pews
and the doctrines that tried to make me disappear.
I have carried their words too long,
pressed them into my ribs until I thought they were mine.

But you—
you have always seen me whole.
Before they told me my body was wrong,
before they wrote rules to keep me from love,
you knit me together with colors they refused to name.
You called me radiant before they called me sinner.

Create in me a heart that beats in the rhythm of truth.
Breathe into these tired bones a spirit that cannot be erased.
Let me sing the song of the outcast made holy,
of the exile called beloved,
of the one they tried to bury,
rising, rising, rising—

not in spite of who I am,
but because of it.