A Snippet from the Quiet Side

So, I'm sitting on my bed.

I'm staring at a blank wall and Jonsi is playing and I'm feeling unbalanced and yet perfectly centered.
I wish I could shed this skin I'm in and begin again. A winter wind races in through the open window, white curtain dancing, and I feel like I'm waiting for spring to show me she's coming.

I'm waiting for something to stop dying. For something to stop being hidden. For things to decompose completely so that something else can be built in its stead.

I finally have admitted to myself that there are no signs of life in garden beds which I've tilled, and no seeds I've planted in soil will return any life to my earth-pounding hands.

I wish I could make sense of why some soil is alive, and why others choke,
why some graves becomes wombs,
and some nests become tombs,

all I know is how I feel when I'm knees-down in winter,
hearing nothing but the cold sound of an empty earth.

I am sitting on my bed and Jonsi sings the songs of We Bought a Zoo, and I wish I had a zoo to buy to give me something beyond this winter that seems to teem wild with things I never asked for.

8 years ago, I sat on my bed in a Northern NY farmhouse, and listened to Sigur Ros, and felt all the beautiful things slipping between my fingers. I dropped them all with each tear from my eye and let the loose ends unravel and stared out a single window into a forest barren of life.

Today feels not much different. Except this time, I'm unraveling into grace, and not myself. I'm lifting some dirt-stained hands, not in protest, but surrender.

Because as CS Lewis said,

All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, "You must do this. I can't.”