Full of enormous potential, but helpless as ever. Can you relate? My hands are tied behind my back. They want to create, to bring life, but they’re held in place. So I bash my head against the desk. Over and over to release my pent-up energy. It never works. My pulse punches through my temple resting on the tabletop. Blood runs from the gash on my forehead and pools around my ear. It’s like I’m half underwater. The only thing that ever reaches the paper is a thin stream of red. A whip of wind sweeps the page out of the open window. It twirls and flips its way down to the bloodstream streets where it joins the works of the helpless, like me, in a crimson river. The way the sun glints off this red sea, almost brings about a glimpse of beauty. Like the lonely creatives really float together. But as soon as realization reaches the bystanders, the drifting, bloody note they were reading is pulled down the gutter. “Oh,” they say, “I almost learned something from that one.” It plummets in a waterfall into the sewers. Down here is a superhighway for the lost work of restless dreamers. The sewers are like the veins of a sleeping giant, waiting for time to wake him up.

Sloshing around in murky waters, our common works mesh and mingle. They exchange glances and words and rub shoulders with their brothers and sisters. They all trace their beginnings to beautifully misunderstood minds. No one will ever really understand them. And that’s perfectly OK, perfectly imperfect. There’s only one of me and there’s definitely only one of you. So why waste time trying to figure each other out?

Our works of art don’t make it to the gallery. They are plastered to the curved stone walls, framed in slime and decay, not golden leaves. The homeless are the only ones invited to this exhibit. They’re street smart and they’ve learned home is not a place, so they come here, to where people are finally honest. Where people finally say what they mean. No more fake attempts at being alright. These artists let their blood tell the real story. Uncensored. In all their hurt. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but our color of choice is red.

Back at my desk, face down, collapsed in the thick of my own failure. I have reached the meager end of myself – Undesirable Number One. A lone, discarded, broken, hollow, useless carcass. When there is nothing we can do but scrape and crawl along the ground, the grime under our fingernails telling of the places we’ve been. “And I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen your darkest reaches. You were never hidden from Me.” We are scooped up from the death grip of indifference and hoisted upon His shoulders. The King raises us up like a trophy for the angels to see. “This is Mine. And will be forever.”

You, your life, it’s all you’ve got. If our God holds us high in our very worst condition. If He tells the crowd how proud of us He is while we are covered in revolting foulness, how much wider will be His smile when we believe those words and raise our filthy fists in the air like a champion? Our life held high.

Black tear-streaks of dirt persistently run from our eyes, but the drops don’t hit the ground anymore. They are collected in a bottle as precious reminders of just how far we’ve come. Being found sure feels a lot like being lost, but I don’t care anymore. I know who I am and it has nothing to do with me. We can’t change the world, but we can change ourselves. Nothing will change if I don’t change first. That is how we turn the tides – one stream of red at a time.