Among the Best Of Them

 He would have kept his dreams,
tried harder to make sense of things
If life had been more kind
to the boy he used to be

The struggle of forgiveness never ends;
The bitterness began when he was young
It's hard to understand
what it is to be a man,
if all you know is how to run

He felt pain in ways none could explain
And couldn't keep it off his sleeve
Anger spewed from missing pieces;
He tried everything to get away
No one understood why he was different
He struggled just to understand himself

He hardly knew the consequences
Passing time for fun, he would explain
But all he knew was how to run
If only from his empty disposition

The years passed and left behind
a trail of broken pieces
To underestimate his own potential
Convinced that he was not enough;
Finding love is wishful thinking,
But deep inside he longed to find
a place made just for him

So many times he asked the question
Trying to find the answer in somebody else
He leaned along the lines of giving up
But instead decided he would search inside himself

He began to pray
God knows that change is hard to make
Flaws are hard to face
Wounds can grow to demons
and fester into plague
He may have thought to run again,
but he is stronger than we think

He's come around half circle;
He still has more yet left to make
The bottom line, he realized,
life is mine, and mine alone, to make
I can choose to stand right where I am,
plant my roots and cultivate
Or run alone until I'm old and far too late
So he chose and then began to grow

A boy becomes a man by choice and not by fate
Today he stands among the best of them
Humbled by a troubled past
He knows how far he came
And still has yet to go
By grace, he knows
Only by grace--
He is remade