Friday, January 29, 2010

Looking Back


Warning — Heavy, honest stuff ahead. Please keep your arms and legs inside this emotional rollercoaster at all times.

This past year was a minefield; every step bringing the possibility of complete and utter destruction. I haven't written much about it publicly as I am still not quite sure how to put it all down in words. There is so much room for misunderstanding and the potential for opinions and judgement, that I'm not quite sure I'm ready to open my home up to that.

However, tonight I found a forgotten TextEdit document, written in rambling haste one evening last summer. Maybe you have walked or are walking through the darkness, your current "valley of the shadow". Perhaps you've had many nights pounding your proverbial heart to keep it beating, surviving.

Know this... this too shall pass. And even I can say that, only six months later.

Memories are invisible, but here. Slowly fading like a dark t-shirt sitting in the sunlight for weeks at a time. They fade. and someday I might say, "Did this used to be black? I don't remember..." and maybe then they will fade into oblivion, into that vault of memories you don't really remember anymore. You know they're there but they don't haunt you or pass by like a ghost, unexpected, sending a chill down your spine.

I'm an utter disappointment to even myself, who dreamed and hoped and planned so much bigger than a broken heart and tiny apartment, incurred debt and chubby, flabby arms. I want him to love me because I'm not so sure that I even love myself, and I can't really choose myself. I'm stuck with me. My love for me has waned into the shadows too and I find myself looking at myself in the mirror, shrugging with indifference, saying "it's you again."

I imagine us old, our children asking us the secret to a happy marriage and we look at each other with that knowing look. The one that says, "You don't want to know what we had to go through to get here... You have no idea how many mistakes, people, messes, we have left in the wake of our broken humanity."

I'm starting to think that everyone I know who has a happy marriage, happy home, meaningful life... only have such things because at some point they chose to live in the "now" and not in the what was or what if. They looked at what was set before them and decided they'd fight for the possibility of something intangible instead of giving up and starting all over again with something, someone, somewhere else. What a waste to live life with beginning over again and again and again.

I could live my life with beginning after beginning after beginning. or I could start getting into the bigger things, the middle chapters, the meat of the story. The parts where the reader starts to wonder if I really know what I'm doing, if I'm going to make the right decisions, if I'll learn the lessons I'm supposed to learn.

What kind of heroine would I be if I just gave up at the end of every chapter? I would never read the story of my life if that were the case.

So I pray for some peace. The kind that doesn't numb me, but makes my heart warm just a bit. The Spirit that comes in and makes me ok with my questions.

So here I am, looking at the middle chapters, the unknown.

and that's going to have to be ok for now.

5 comments:

  1. Thank you for opening up like that! Know that your pearls are safe with us and we love, Love, LOVE you, in your strong days and in your not so strong days... in your bright days and your dark...

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  2. That was a very wise, and wiser yet to be, woman writing those words. Amen.

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  3. thanks to you both. my sisters in blood and heart. love you!

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  4. Thanks for your honesty and sharing. I hope your faith has brought refreshment and encouragement.

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  5. I appreciate you and I adore you! Your honesty is inspiring and I am so thankful for your example of authenticity! Soooooo looking forward to what God has in store for our relationship in the future :)

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