O Father of The Fatherless

O Father of The Fatherless

O Father of the fatherless
in whom all families are blessed
I love the way You father me
You gave me life, forgave the past
now in Your arms I’m safe at last
I love the way You father me

Father me, for ever You’ll father me
and in Your embrace I’ll be forever secure
I love the way You father me
I love the way You father me

When bruised and broken I draw near
You hold me close and dry my tears
I love the way You father me
At last my fearful heart is still
surrendered to Your perfect will
I love the way You father me

If in my foolishness I stray
returning empty and ashamed
I love the way You father me
Exchanging for my wretchedness
Your radiant robes of righteousness
I love the way You father me

And when I look into Your eyes
from deep within my spirit cries
I love the way You father me
Before such love I stand amazed
and ever will through endless days
I love the way You father me

© 1992 Make Way Music

Here is another song that I sing to my children.

This particular recording is not that good but was recorded one Sunday morning when I sung it at church2

Tears In Heaven

Tears In Heaven

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven
Will it be the same
If I saw you in heaven
I must be strong, and carry on
Cause I know I don’t belong
Here in heaven

Would you hold my hand
If I saw you in heaven
Would you help me stand
If I saw you in heaven
I’ll find my way, through night and day
Cause I know I just can’t stay
Here in heaven

Time can bring you down
Time can bend your knee
Time can break your heart
Have you begging please
Begging please

(instrumental)

Beyond the door
There’s peace I’m sure.
And I know there’ll be no more…
Tears in heaven

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven
Will it be the same
If I saw you in heaven
I must be strong, and carry on
Cause I know I don’t belong
Here in heaven

Cause I know I don’t belong
Here in heaven

© Eric Clapton

Some years back Momma and Poppa’s son and my son Daniel took his life.

I recorded this out of love and sent it to Momma and Poppa and the family.

I have included it here so that they and the family can access it at anytime.

Pray For Our Pastor

Pray For Our Pastor

Please pray much faster,
we’ve only one pastor
And he has so much
he’s to do.

He’s prayed and he’s fasted
I amazed that he’s lasted
Especially pastoring you

He’s youth clubs and kids club
Studies and prayer meets
And even a men’s group or three

And if that ain’t enough
It’s really been tough
Cause he’s even been pastoring me

So please pray much faster
For our solitary pastor
And the life that now is his lot

And if you’ve a mind
Be ever so kind
And forgive him
For being a Scott!

And think of his wife
As she helps with his strife
And their children
Whom they love so true.

So show that you care
And for her say a prayer
And forgive her
Cause she’s Scottish too.

© Kevin A. Deane

To listen to this poem please click on the arrow below.

OK here is a just a bit of fun really. I was mopping the floor and thinking about a conversation I had had with my Pastor when this little poem started to form in my head.

As you know I live and attend a church in Ireland. The Pastor and his wife (Andrew and Lorna) a good friends of mine and are great people whom I love dearly. Both of them are Scottish and came over here to answer a call they had on their lives.

Now I often play with them about their being Scottish (I’m English so that may explain why) and so wrote this little poem just as a bit of playfulness really.

I hope you enjoy it.

Fathered By Pain

Fathered By Pain

Sitting here reflecting,
On a life that once had been.
The darkness all around me,
Save, the flicker from my screen.

Thoughts of years of childhood,
A childhood now gone by.
And teenage years of anger,
When told I couldn’t cry.

And through it all you came to me
In dark and evil pain
Sexual hatred on two legs
And father was your name

Did not you know?
Could not you tell?
That which in me you made
The child in me you’d suffocate
A sacrifice you laid.

Laid out to die
No laughter’s friend
No joy, no peace, no hope.
My heart you strangled with your sin
Like neck – entangled rope

My days you filled with anger
My nights you filled with fear
Not only for the then but now
No matter what the year.

So think on this my dearest man
And think so very well
The pain you placed within my life
Will be nothing like your hell!

© Kevin A. Deane

To listen to this poem please click on the arrow below.

Another poem that is so much from my heart.

Value Me

This particular post is of a song and not a poem.

It is a song called Value Me by Phil Lawson Johnston and is a song that I often sing to my kids when they are feeling low or when the nightmares, self-doubt, flashbacks or self-loathing comes on.

It really is a wonderful song and it’s music and words are soul touching and because it means so much to them (and to me) I recorded it for them.

Wanting for them to access it no matter where they or I are I have uploaded it here.

Value Me.

Tell me I’m valued. Tell me I’m loved.
And the child within my heart will cry.
Who wants a reject? Who really cares?
For a victim of self-hatred and fear
A river damned. A Stagnant pool
Enclosed by death. Polluted by sin
Still find me special? Still call me loved?
For my heart finds it hard to accept
You value me.

Tell me I’m needed. Respected, affirmed.
And the child within my heart will say
How can you value? How can you love?
A captive locked in walls of clay
A fountain dry? A garden sealed?
And over grown with thorn and weed.
You tell me I’m special? You tell me I’m loved?
Yet I still find it hard to accept
You value me.

Is it deception?
Or is it a mask?
Created by the power of lies?
If I’m forgiven
If it’s the truth
It will only take one glance of your eyes
And you’ll steal my heart
You’ll make me whole
Replacing my old heart of stone.
Please tell me I’m special
Please tell me I’m loved
And my heart shall be free to accept
And my heart shall be free to accept
You value me.
You value me.
You value me.

© Phil Lawson-Johnston

To listen to this song please click on the arrow below.

A Thought

A Thought

When a thing lacks nothing,
Indeed when it boasts of nothing.
When it does not draw attention to itself by show,
but simply compliments it’s creator by it’s very being,
then and only then is it truly complete.

Such was the relationship between Christ and God.
Such should be the relationship between disciple and Christ.

© Kevin A. Deane

To listen to this poem please click on the arrow below.

My Child

My Child

My child you give me pleasure.
My child you give me joy.
My child you are my hearts content.
all my emotions you employ.

At times you bring me sadness,
at times you bring me pain.
But the words that’ll never leave my lips,
my child, will be your name.

For I love you.
With a deeper love.
than you have ever known,
come to my arms,
for you my child,
will always be my own.

Give your life to me, my child
place your heart within my hand
and let me show you how to live,
and love every creature in my land.

For I love you.
With a deeper love.
than you have ever known,
come to my arms,
for you my child,
will always be my own.

My child, you’re my creation.
I breathed my life within your soul.
Without you in my kingdom,
it could never be made whole.

The pain that I have taken,
can never count as loss,
for I paid the price so long ago,
when I hung upon a cross.

For I love you.
With a deeper love.
than you have ever known,
come to my arms,
for you my child,
will always be my own.

For I love you.
With a deeper love.
than you have ever known,
come to my arms,
for you my child,
will always be my own.

© Kevin A. Deane

To listen to this poem please click on the arrow below.

I wrote this one back in 2003 for someone very special to me. I hope it blesses you too

Your Son or Your Sin?

Your Son or Your Sin

Your Son or Your Sin?

You think that you love,
and I wanted you to stay?
But you wanted it once,
and then threw me away.

You wanted then took,
then you notched up your score.
But I want you to look
at your son that I bore.

© Kevin A. Deane

To listen to this poem please click on the arrow below.

This poem is written as a comment on casual sex and the way that some men treat women as objects of sex to be used and discarded.

But what of the life that is created as a result of this?

o

Voices of Glass

Voices of Glass

To listen to this poem please click on the arrow below.

To listen to a version of this poem which is designed to give you an idea of what goes on inside my head as a result of my paranoid schizophrenia please click on the arrow below. Please note that this version starts with about 30 seconds of simulated example of voices which can be disturbing to some.

JUST STOP SHOUTING YOUR CRUD!
SIT DOWN ! Tell me your names!
I can’t take all your noise,
All your hurts and your pains.
Can’t take all the jeering,
The tricks and the games.
You’re strange and you’re scary,
And don’t fit in my frames!

See I know who you are,
Well some of you I guess,
But together you’re noise,
you’re hurt, sorrow and stress.
And you come from a past
That I tried to leave behind
Didn’t want it to stay
in my dreams and my mind.

And they say I must try
If I want to stay sane
To listen and learn
And understand you, for gain.
To let you all live,
be free, be alive
not bury you deep
in my memories hive.

But what of my faith,
And the God that I know?
Can He love all the “me’s”
Or must one only grow?
Or am I just crazy,
Unlovable too
Alone and afraid
Behind a mask made for you.

And this mask that I wear
I didn’t choose on my own
I wear it to hide
All the pain that I’ve known
I can’t take off this mask
Be alive or be me.
It’s a permanent prison
Built just to house me.

Well not just for me
It houses you here
Keeps you hidden within
In my world full of fear.
Unless you break out
Like sometimes you do
Are you looking for love
Or did pain father you?

And what of the others
Who just meet my mask
To show them the me
Seems an impossible task
But I want to be known
For the me not for you
Not the past that I was
But the now that is true.

But you taunt me and hurt
Like I did you some wrong
When I am feeling so weak
You all seem so strong
And the pure crystal rose
All the love that I’d start
You Shattered and broke
And drove into my heart

I want to be real
To feel real and true
I want to be me
Not the “me” that holds you
For my life to make sense
Not this unending farce
I must lose all of you
My voices of glass

© Kevin A. Deane

There is a Mental Health condition known as Paranoid Schizophrenia and a condition known as either MPD or DID – (Multiple Personality Disorder or Dissociative Identity Disorder) depending on where you are or which Mental Health practitioner you speak to.

I have been diagnosed with both of these.

In essence Paranoid Schizophrenia (in the most simplistic of explanations) is where the sufferer can experience; auditory hallucinations, paranoia, bizarre delusions, altered perceptions, and disorganized speech and thoughts.

In terms of MPD or DID it does indeed have some similarities and is slightly more complicated.  It is currently believed by some that this comes where a trauma or trauma’s in your life have cause you core personality to fragment. Although I am sure many will argue that definition and indeed many do argue about it’s very existence as an illness/condition and believe it to be a misdiagnosis.

This poem is simply my ramblings on the subject.

It is my way of trying to express both what my Paranoid Schizophrenia is like and my expressing my reaction to it and/or my MPD/DID.

Victim, Target, or Son?

Victim, Target, or Son?

Sitting in the darkness
Silence all around
Lost within a world now passed
In my nightmares I am found.

So many years have come and gone,
so many thoughts and fears.
So many hurts and scars I’ve borne.
So many wasted years.

And all your anger, all your pain,
that grew in you, within.
You painted on the child I was,
the empty canvass of my skin.

What of that anger and that pain?
That you vented onto me?
In you each time, to come and go,
and find it’s home in me.

Was I allowed to be the child?
Once destined so to be?
Or did you stain this precious child,
with your lines of misery?

And what about the way I viewed,
the world in which I’d grow?
Words of love, like “son” and “dad”
Was I ever meant to know?

How could it be that one so small,
should be the victim of your hate?
In childhood years and adult dreams
Was that always to be my fate?

I cannot say the hate you bore,
I now hold within my heart.
Just scars and tears of emptiness,
where hope’s been torn apart.

So if one day, you come across,
the man that I’ve become.
Just stop and look and ask yourself,
“Victim? Target? Or Son?”

© Kevin A. Deane

To listen to this poem please click on the arrow below.

For all the children I have ever met who have suffered abuse. And to all the fathers who ever inflicted it. There is another way.