It's Spring!
I’m sitting down to write. Take a deep breath in and exhale… take in an “okay I’m ready” sigh. I believe my soul just gave the same sigh.
(queue the sigh Axel Rose gives at the beginning of “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn”)
I haven’t posted a blog since March. Nine months.
Much of the time spent in those months I would term “Comfortably Numb”. (I can’t help myself. I love classic rock. God hasn’t purged that from me!)
After nine months, the words are starting to come again. So fast and so out of no where that I can’t get to a keyboard fast enough to get them tapped out. Please Lord, bring them back to my mind! It feels so amazing to have my brain back!
I decided I was officially ready to write again when I heard this song and I thought THAT’S ME! We may be entering the winter season here in Ohio but my soul is bursting forth in Spring!
SPRING by Sound the Ocean (Lyrics)
All these months of dreaming and hiding from the shadows
Let me down, they always let me down
Fleeting hints of daylight, never-ending evenings
Let me down, they always let me down
But a song begins with a kiss from the sun
Soon my heart will be singing along
Bursting at the seams I just can’t keep it in
Winter’s sting is gone and I can breathe again
Long-forgotten colors are throwing back their covers
Waking up, they’re slowly waking up
Melting frozen shackles, resurrecting feelings
Step outside, I wanna step outside
This song begins with a kiss from the sun
Soon my heart will be singing along
You put the spring back in my step and I’m dancing outside again
Your song is everywhere
You chased the winter blues away
And I’m drinking deeply of your open skies
I’m alive and I’m breathing again
Yeah this heartbeat stopped but it’s screaming again
“…And I’m drinking deeply of your open skies. I’m alive and I’m breathing again. Yeah this heartbeat stopped but it’s screaming again…”
Those closing lines did it. That is me. I would only add the word brave. I feel strong and brave and ready. Finally.
Ready to write. Ready to immerse myself in reading again. I’ve committed to a book every two weeks. That’s in addition to blogs, articles, sermon research, and such. I’m ready to engage in the world again. Finally.
These past 22 months have been the coldest, harshest winter of my 47 years. Some of you know there have been many seasons of death, loss, change, sin, and just life. And yes, the last 22 months is the worst.
I could have never imagined what was coming. I lost more than I ever imagined I would on March 5th, 2014. The journey through all of this has cost me more than my grieving brain would understand.
I’ve been embraced and cast away. Covered with grace and judged. I have far less people in my daily life and far more real depth with who is here.
There have been broken hearts and broken relationships. Some of which only space and grace can heal.
During this raw brutal winter, there has been pleading, sobbing, dead silence, death, grief, and God.
God has been here in all of it. When I pleaded and sobbed. God ran to me. When I sat numb and confused. God sat with me. When the death of so much was occurring and the grief was drowning me, God pulled my face from the waves, providing the rescue breaths I needed.
God has been present, popping in and out of sight, like the glistening you catch on a snowy winter day. The glistening on tree branches as the sun light hits them for a flashing moment. You see them out of the corner of your eye, turn and they are gone. But you know they were there. That was God.
Glennon Doyle Melton writes this in "Carry on, Warrior":
"…I like to compare God's love to the sunrise. The sun shows up every morning, no matter how bad you've been the night before. It shines without judgment. It never withholds. It warms the sinners, the saints, the druggies, the cheerleaders - the saved and the heathens alike. You can hide from the sun, but it won't take that personally. It'll never, ever punish you for hiding. You can stay in the dark for years or decades, and when you finally step outside, it'll be there…"
I’m stepping outside in the beauty of spring again. God’s love is still here.
I believe that so much of life is just figuring out how to live it. Fall. Sin. Lesson Learned. Try this way because it’s what you know. Well that didn’t go well. Lesson learned. React to the information you have at hand and with the tools you have on board. Learn later that didn’t go so well. Lesson learned. Stand up. Stick your head out into the sun. Lesson Learned.
The biggest lesson learned for me is this: God is still here. He hasn’t punished me for tears and doubts and fears and hiding, for some not-so-nice things I yelled at Him, and for taking 22 months for my spring to arrive.
Three other blog posts have already arrived on paper as well. One is forming in my mind right now as I’m trying to finish this one. A few of my friends have said… “SHEEEE’S BAAAACK!”
But I’m not really back. I’ve been here all along. Transforming. Morphing. Healing.
“People ask “are you sure you’re better?”. Better is a troublesome word for me. Better suggests increased value, and I think I was worth exactly the same when I was a fall-down drunk as I am now: a sober, loving, creative wife, mother, sister, daughter, and friend. I prefer the word healing to the word better… healing means surrendering to and following the world’s truest rules, the rules created by God” (Another soul touching quote by Glennon Doyle Melton in “Carry on Warrior)
So, no I’m not back. And I’m not better. I’m healing. Just as the earth heals in the spring from the death and bareness of winter. New life pokes its head through with bravery and courage.
I don’t know why God has called me to this life. There is much I do not understand. For the life of me, I can’t fathom why God has given me a voice and compelled me to share my journey.
But He has and my spring has arrived. Open skies and wide open spaces are before me.
And I’m breathing again.