Reflective Recluse

Author: Julette Joy Prayogg

  • A Note to God: I Cannot Carry Any More Grief

    Dear God,

    I am coming to You tonight with a heart that feels completely worn out.
    I don’t know how much more grief I can carry at work. We have just buried our Principal, and now another member of our school family is gone.

    It feels as though before my heart has had a chance to breathe, another loss comes and asks me to hurt all over again.
    Lord, I am tired.
    I am grieving, and I don’t know how to keep walking into that place carrying this much sorrow.

    You know the people I love. You know the memories, the laughter, the kindness, the faces I have grown accustomed to seeing. And You know how deeply these losses affect me.
    So tonight, God, I am asking You to carry what I cannot.

    Give me strength for the days when walking through those school gates feels heavy. Give me peace where there is sadness. Cover my colleagues and our entire school family with Your comfort.

    Your Word says, “He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3.
    Lord, bind mine.

    Please don’t let grief consume the joy You have left for me. Give me grace to mourn without breaking, to remember without falling apart, and to keep going when my heart simply wants to stop.

    I cannot manage any more grief, Lord.
    So I place it all in Your hands.
    Carry me until I can carry myself again.

    Amen.

    © Julette Joy Prayogg

  • Rivers & Roots

    Some rivers race to the sea,
    Their banks wide,
    their waters free.
    Others twist through shadowed lands,
    Carving valleys with their hands.

    Some trees drink from hidden springs,
    Their leaves catch light that fortune brings.
    Others grow where stones are laid,
    Roots entwined in soil self-made.

    Some winds blow with cruel intent,
    With gusts that sting, to make the slow breeze repent.
    Still, every stream and every tree
    Grows in time, as it should be.

    Not by another’s measured pace,
    But by the quiet of its space.
    Find joy in your own flow,
    Tend the roots you’ve made and know
    What blooms in time will always show.

    © January 12, 2026
    Julette Prayogg
    Loreen Herasingh Prayogg
    Inspired by observations of people’s actions. Full use was made of Poetic Devices to camouflage people’s personalities and diversities.

  • When Deliverance Doesn’t Look Divine

    Sometimes, when God delivers you, the method won’t be pretty.
    When He PLACES His POWERFUL HANDS on you it’s not always SOFT.
    He answers earnest prayers, but His help may arrive wrapped in storms, losses, or silence.
    It might feel like the world has turned against you
    but even in the chaos, His hand is at work.
    You may not like how He brings you out,
    but out you will come, stronger, wiser, and unshackled.

    © Julette Joy Prayogg, June 2, 2025

  • The Power of Connection

    In a world where relationships can often feel disposable, it is essential to prioritize nurturing connections rather than neglecting them.

    True relationships provide opportunities for growth through understanding, and instead of severing ties, we should focus on mending and deepening our bonds.

    The real strength lies in reconciliation. Trusting a higher power to guide us can help reveal the connections that are truly worth cherishing.

    It’s important to hold on to the good people in our lives while gracefully letting go of those who may not have our best interests at heart.

    © Julette Prayogg, 25/01/25

  • Hardboiled Cruelty

    Illness isn’t a battlefield for punishment;
    Its where humanity prove its worth or its absence
    Illness is a cracked shell, fragile beneath the storm’s weight.
    There’s no honor in being hardboiled, callous,
    Wielding an axe, a weapon, cracking at a shell’s suffering.
    Is compassion a faint light just out of reach?
    Will jagged shadows of indifference prove humanity’s absence?

    Written by Julette Prayogg / Loreen Herasingh
    (© December 3, 2024)
    Inspired today by someone I know with mental illness

  • The Solitude Within

    In the stillness of solitude, I find clarity, away from the clamor of shifting loyalties and tangled truths.
    Trust, once a bridge, now feels like a threshold I guard.
    Silence becomes my refuge, where intentions remain untainted, and I am free to preserve my peace.

    Julette Joy Prayogg, December 1, 2024
    © 2024 Julette Joy Prayogg

  • The Coins

    When or how she imprinted on me is as kooky as can be.
    A statuesque misfit with sunken, tired, delicious, dangerous eyes, sparkling with misery amongst demented friends.
    Awesomely clean with a sculptor’s hands, begging to mold instead of scrounging for crumbs.
    Oh! That voice! That slid into my head as she begged for COINS, so fruity, so sotto voce, so alien.

    And this one memory surpasses them all: That day she dangled and flipped that knife, an expert in motion ready to carve up a slice.
    As I watched in fascination from afar, a husky voice rasped, “She was a FINE SURGEON, you know… that’s right…
    Betrayed by her soulmate, forgotten vows… So she gave up the fight.”

    And I wonder as I pass her empty cot, I pray she was diagnosed with Imposter Syndrome, spirited away from these alien streets, fed some meds that cut her free.
    Then I wouldn’t be so gaga with regret, act so bonkers about the man who caused her mental death, and thoughts of her stolen life and talent flushed down the tubes wouldn’t haunt my waking breath.

    Julette Prayogg, 12/12/2020