What prostrate means.

I read a lot of verses in the Bible that talk about lying prostrate. I must be honest and tell you that I didn't know what it meant until I finally looked it up two summers ago.

pros·trate (prstrt)
tr.v. pros·trat·ed, pros·trat·ing, pros·trates
1. To put or throw flat with the face down, as in submission or adoration: "He did not simply sit and meditate, he also knelt down, sometimes even prostrated himself" (Iris Murdoch).
2. To cause to lie flat: The wind prostrated the young trees.
3. To reduce to extreme weakness or incapacitation; overcome: an illness that prostrated an entire family; a nation that was prostrated by years of civil war.
adj.
1. Lying face down, as in submission or adoration.
2. Lying flat or at full length.
3. Reduced to extreme weakness or incapacitation; overcome.
4. Botany Growing flat along the ground.

Anyways, what I got out of the big brown dictionary I used were these synonyms: to overcome, to wear down, to submit, to arrest.

I really wish I remembered the specific verses I read that prompted me to write these poems. But I don't. I'll go back and post verses on lying prostrate. For now, here are the poems:

"To Fall Prostrate"

If I am an empty cup. If I am
brittle and chipping away. If I am
lamenated by anything I touch,

I wish for You to break me.

I wish to fall, agast
with a sudden blow, or
silently cracked, by piece.

I wish for You to create me again, and fill me.

(That one was written in 2008. I specicially remember why I wrote this poem; it was after a Bible Study at a summer camp---The Masterworks Festival, aka the most awesome place ever. The Bible Study leader mentioned of those two different ways God teacheS us things in our life. One is by dramatic changes. Sometimes it's black one second and white the next. Othertimes it divulges itself in many shade of gray, and you don't realize until later you're a different color.)

"What prostrate means"

Sometimes it is
wearing out. My hands, my joints
my arms, my throat,
every point, like stars
Blinking away into space, collapsing,

and I crumble,
mere wear,
and I tear up. You win
the war, and I finally am
captivated,
free.

Sometimes
it is overcome,

I throw off the towel again.

God,
and here,
like a big bright
Light. I take You, the edge
of my feet singing silently,
every muscle vibrating.
You are the
Giver. And throwing

off the towel, no longer
afraid of the Water,
no longer ashamed of the plummet,
of sinking into
Your praise. Instead,

praise rise glowing, flushed.

(This one I wrote a few days ago.)