Poetry out of Loss

I found The Christians with Chronic Illness Blog Carnival when searching around to see what people were already addressing on CFS. It’s only new - first carnival was last month.

I was so impressed with the idea as a way for Christians to encourage each other that I put a link to it on our blog.

I decided to submit a blog to the May Carnival. The topic is ‘Coping with Loss’. I’ve been chewing on it for a few weeks now, the deadline is 5th May. So you’ll see my efforts soon.

While I was thinking about ‘loss’ a poem that I thought of in 2003 came back to me and I was able to finish it. It’s called ‘I’ve lost my sense of humour’

These were words I said to my husband at the worst of my anxiety during my nervous break down. At the time I couldn’t smile at all. I was teaching full time but had completely lost my joy. God in his goodness made me smile for a brief moment, after I’d said it, when I began to think of the kinds of places a sense of humour could be lost and how that could be made into a funny poem for kids.

Every now & then, over the past 6 years, when I've been in the depths, I’ve remembered those two lines and the ideas I had for a poem, but not had the creative energy to act on them.

So, 6 years later, it has taken shape because of this Blog carnival. It turned out to be more about the journey I have taken with humour, since I became a Christian at 26, than a slap-stick poem for kids. But it's still slightly amusing.


I’ve lost my sense of humour
I don’t know where it’s gone
And no one seems to care at all
That I’m no longer fun

I asked my lovely granny
Where she thought it may be
“Have you tried the gutter?”
Was all she said to me

My darling little sister
Just handed me a map
Called “Expense of Others”
“I’ll bet that’s where it’s at.”

“Perhaps you might have flushed it?”
Dad said, well meaningly
“It lives in the toilet
Almost permanently.”

Desperately I cried out loud
To the Lord Almighty
“Where is my sense of humour?”
(Then waited in my nightie.)

His answer came, a quiet voice,
And He wasn’t joking,
“It’s time to put that off now,
Just like you gave up smoking

I’ll give you mine, a pure one,
To compensate your loss.
I’ve promised to refine you,
And those smiles were the dross

I promised golden laughter
That bubbles from within,
Overflows then cascades out
In a joyful fountain”

I’ve lost my sense of humour
But maybe it’s just changed
Just like other parts of me
That Jesus rearranged