Faith with Splinters

Faith with Splinters

My faith was once a glass display—no questions, dusted clean,

A polished shelf of easy words in stained-glass reds and green.

It shimmered when the choir rose, it glowed when candles burned.

But shattered at the first sharp doubt and cut me when I turned.

These days, it looks more workshop than cathedral in the sun—

A bench of scarred intentions and a job still half-begun.

I plane my fears in creaking strokes, saw through inherited “musts,”

And wipe my hands on denim smeared with doubt and holy dust.

I’ve pulled out nails of “should have known,” of “never slip or fall,”

I’ve pried up planks of “perfect” from the floorboards of it all.

Yet every time I lift a board, beneath the brittle grain

I find a knot of stubborn hope still weathering the rain.

My knuckles learn the names of tools I never thought I’d hold.

Forgiveness is like a sanding block; confession is sharp and bold.

I measure twice before I cut another person down.

And if I miss, I patch the gap instead of doubling down.

Some evenings I sit back and see the gaps I couldn’t hide—

the beams that don’t quite line up, the unfilled cracks of pride.

Still, light leaks in through every seam I failed to seal with “right.”

And what I called a flaw becomes a window for the light.

I do not trust the voices now that promise painless peace.

That sell a ready-made belief with edges filed to please.

I’ll take the creed with splinters, thanks, the kind that leaves a scar.

So when I hold another’s hurt, I know just where we are.

So if you come here looking for a faith that never shakes,

that never wakes at 3 A.M. or makes repair mistakes,

I only have this wooden thing, this creaking, handmade heart—

But you can sit; there’s room for you in every rough-cut part.

And when we leave the workshop door and lock up for the night,

We’ll smell like sawdust, sweat, and care, not spotless, but alight—

Two carpenters of fragile trust with bandaged, working fingers,

Still building something strong enough from faith that comes with splinters.