Storytellers Poetry Contest Winner: Dear Lord, Only You: A Prayer of Surrender (3rd Place)
by Deborah Rutherford
THE STORY BEHIND THE POEM:
Sometimes we don't recognize the bitterness in our own hearts until we see it in someone else's. I saw my friend struggling with suffocating bitterness, though this seemed normal to her, given “the cards” life dealt her. As I tried to help her see that God was more than a card dealer, I realized I had my own deep-seated bitterness in my heart as well. We are human, and we can't move the mountains in our lives. But God can, and we need to have faith and surrender. And that is what this poem is: my prayer of surrender to my Lord Jesus to re-brush the hues of my heart at his Mountain of Grace. In doing so, I received such beautiful peace from Him.
DEAR LORD, ONLY YOU: A PRAYER OF SURRENDER
So Jesus answered and said to them, “Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore, I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.
–Mark 11:22-24 NKJV
Bitter tendrils vein,
the sunken depths of my heart.
Life felt like cards dealt—
seeming nothing like
I imagined it would be.
And if I really imagined it,
why did I paint it this way—
so weeping, dark, and stained?
But God is not a sharp-eyed card dealer.
I dare to say:
Do I blame Him
for my reckless wager?
O, what sovereign grace,
what magnificent remedy awaits?
Only You, my Lord,
can extract this granite grief,
deeply entrenched,
looming over
this mountain named bitterness,
that seems immovable
as girdling roots.
O, frail and delicate human, I remain,
a broken vessel—yes, human—
who cannot bear my pain.
I am no mountain mover—only You!
Only Your hand propels the peaks to plummet.
Can I surrender the stones that I hold?
The mountains of sorrow swept in the shadows—
the mountains of confusion and haze—
the mountains of mistakes
and old plagues that grip and bind.
To bathe in the healing waters
of the Mountain of Grace,
where Light casts out
the shadow roots,
my heart re-brushed with grace’s hues.
O, bowed low
in Your holy courts,
my fragrant prayers incense.
And though consequences still reside,
may my Mountain Mover grant me
His peace and comfort to abide,
all the days of my life.
DEBORAH RUTHERFORD
Deborah loves Jesus, being Don's wife, singing old hymns, and nature walks under the Georgia pines. She is a poet, author, podcaster, and award-winning makeup artist with an Emmy, as well as the founder of the Behold-Her Beauty Podcast and Blog. She is the author of Unexpected Blessings: 40 Days of Discovering God's Best and the forthcoming Prodigal Daughter: Poems of Light for the Lost Ones. She has been published in The Way Back to Ourselves Literary Journal, Vessels of Light Literary Journal, Calla Press Literary Journal, The Truly Co. Magazine, and Prosetrics Literary Magazine.
You can follow her on Substack and Instagram.