When I Close My Eyes

When I close my eyes, the sky ignites again, RPGs burn trails where the stars should have been. Loud booms split the air, radio chatter fills my head, orders beneath the screaming, voices living and dead. I see Afghan mothers running, pulling children through the fear, pain and crying, body bags, the sounds I never want to hear. A tent city made of vengeance, stitched with blood and hate, an old Russian hangar holding men in cages that we made. Steel assembled by our hands, prisoners staring through the frame, we said mission, we said justice, every face still bears a name. Nothing stays beneath the rubble, nothing disappears with time, every image we tried burying is still buried in my mind. Every flash becomes a doorway. Every sound rewinds the time. There is no rest behind my eyelids. War waits inside the silence. When I close my eyes, I don't see darkness. I see everything I could not leave behind. Every cry and every face, Every life on every side. The whole war comes alive When I close my eyes. I see my wife alone and crying, waiting for her man, praying he would make it home from war the way a husband can. I walked back through the doorway, the battlefield came too. She waited for the man she loved, I brought the war straight through. She never wore the armor, never heard the calls at night, still she lived with my defenses, with my anger and my fight. She waited for a homecoming that never arrived, my body made it back to her, but war was still alive. She needed peace beside her, I was scanning every room. She reached to find her husband, I kept listening for the boom. I thought that I had left it, I thought time would make it end. But every time I closed my eyes, it all began again. Jesus, when I close my eyes, enter everything I see. Walk through every ruined memory, enter into me. Enter into this broken rubble You still call by my name. Stand with me inside the wreckage, do not let me look away. If I must return there, Jesus, meet me on that ground. When the pictures start returning, be louder than the sound. Father, save the souls of all those that we harmed. Let Your mercy reach each life our violence left scarred. Let Your mercy run deeper, stretch wider than our sin. Rise higher than the hatred, Father, gather all of us in. Comfort every mother. Hold every frightened child. Remember every prisoner the world has left behind. When I close my eyes, I don't see darkness. I see everything I could not leave behind. Every cry and every face, Every life on every side. Your mercy meets me there When I close my eyes. The darkness could not keep me. The war does not decide. I belong to Your kingdom... When I close my eyes.