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On a Wire

Apr 6, 2013 | Hope & Encouragement, Spirituality

Early in the morning I sat on the couch, my laptop awaiting the click-click-click of my brain and its compliant fingers. Steaming coffee. Vast silence. Cloudy skies. Heavy heart.

I looked out the window and saw six tiny birds sitting on a wire.

I thought about easy it is for them to sit there, perched and pretty, barely hanging on, not a care in the world.

I thought about how when they let go, they soar. How the wind buoys them up into the heavens.

I thought about how hard it is for me to sit still. How I feel like I’m barely hanging on. How I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders.

I thought that were I to really-completely-totally let go, I would undoubtedly crash. How the wind feels brutal and even violent. How flying and any sense of the heavens feels distant, impossible, and as certain-foolish-hope.

Then I just felt. Lots.

And then I thought that maybe that’s why those six birds sat there: waiting for me to think thoughts and then think new ones and then feel – lots and then trust and then Just.Let.Go.

Think. Feel – lots. Trust. Just.Let.Go. And believe that to soar is the only possible result.

Got it.

And just then, in that moment, the birds flew away and the sun broke through the clouds. God’s honest truth.

There Is No Plan B

Apr 4, 2013 | Hope & Encouragement, Women's Wisdom

On days like today I need a way to make sense of (or at least hold on to) my broken heart. Perspective. Confirmation. Sense-making. Sort-of . . .

Because we are vulnerable, life hurts. We are not here to be free of pain. We are here to have our hearts broken by life. To learn to live with vulnerability and to turn pain into love. . . . There is nothing so whole as a broken heart, said Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk, [a] Hasidic sage. The world breaks our hearts wide open; and it is the openness itself that makes us whole. The open heart is the doorway, inviting the angels in, revealing that the world–even in the pit of hell–is charged with the sacred. ~ Miriam Greenspan, Healing Through the Dark Emotions

Yes, this: “. . . even in the pit of hell . . . ”

I’m taking deep (and sometimes graspy, raggedy) breaths.

On days like today, I want to shut my heart down; to create a super-power barrier to the inevitability of ever being hurt or sad or disappointed (again).

And on days like today, the idea (and reality) of continuing to open myself up, to be exposed, to risk and palpably feel heartbreak as the very path to wholeness and joy feels not only counter-intuitive, but just plain idiotic.

Still, there is no Plan B.

Without heartbreak there wouldn’t be space – and spaciousness. Shattered-wide-open creates room for more love – and love and love and love.

So, down I go. Over the edge. Making the leap (which, more truthfully, feels like being pushed off the side of a cliff). Trusting that vulnerability (and raw strength, capacity, and time-worn-hard-earned perseverance) will sustain me (along with texts from my sister, calls from friends, the glimmer of a kind face via Skype, lingering conversation over good soup and better wine, sage advice from wise women in my life, and knowing-hugs from my daughters). And hopefully, prayerfully my faith. Yes, all this will (eventually), lead me back to joy, the sacred – and love and love and love.

“There is nothing so whole as a broken heart . . . ”

I click the heels of my Ruby Slippers and try to imagine, try to believe. “There is nothing so whole as a broken heart. There is nothing so whole as a broken heart. There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.” Longing for home. Longing for hope. Longing . . .

And always, especially on days like today, longing for love – and love and love and love. There is no Plan B to this, either.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. ~ Jesus, Matthew 5:4

May it be so. And then some.

*****

I wrote this post nearly three weeks ago . . . not ready to say it out loud; the emotion too raw. It still is. But in the midst, gracious confirmation that my words matter, that my heart is whole: 

“This is precisely why grief, like love and any other foundational, deceptively simple human emotion or state of being, is the terrain of artists. And it is a writer’s even more specific job to give voice to loss in whatever ways she can, to give shape to this unspeakable, impermeable reality beneath all other realities.” ~ Emily Rapp

Yes.

And so, on a day exactly like today, I’m hitting “publish.” Because even though Easter has passed, I still believe in its message. Because comfort comes. Because grace conquers grief. Because faith endures. Because hope cannot be held back or held down or even, ultimately, withheld from a heart that’s hell-bent on surviving and healing and knowing-giving-generating-offering-receiving-being love and love and love.

Because there is no Plan B . . . gratefully.

364 Days

Dec 31, 2007 | Hope & Encouragement, Women's Wisdom, Writing

364 days have now passed in 2007.

I woke up early this morning for a vacation day and no alarm. I found myself lying there thinking about the past 364 days. There is much to ponder. I got up and made coffee instead.

It’s hard to spend time in a past that is painful. It’s also tempting to just look back on all that was good and choose to overlook the tough stuff. For me, at least, there’s a lot of both. I can’t, nor do I want to escape either. The irony is that the things that have been most painful have also been rife with beauty, growth, love, and life.

The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief
But the pain of grief
Is only a shadow
When compared with the pain
Of never risking love.
(Hilary Stanton Zunin)

I have risked much. I have loved much. These past 364 days, pain has been rife in both.

I have never known the levels of sadness that have accompanied this year. And I have not been overwhelmed.

In the midst of circumstances and realities I was certain would drown me, I have kept afloat.

The tears I was sure would keep me from ever getting out of bed again have not been uncontrollable torrents, but gentle and kind reminders that I do feel, that I do care, that I do desire, that I do love.

The endings that I imagined as incomprehensible and even impossible have brought understanding and possibility I couldn’t have imagined. I feared death – not physical, but nearly every other sense of the word – and have known life.

Despite a large aspect of the past year’s reality and reflection: I am not alone. Neither death nor pain have conquered me.

Life returns.

Love wins.

364 days have passed. At the end of today 2008 will begin. I am grateful for both.

Time to pour another cup of coffee…

“It is finished.” (My divorce is final.)

Aug 23, 2007 | Sovereignty, Women's Wisdom

Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending. (Lazarus Long)

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. (T.S. Eliot)

“It is finished.”

Yesterday I spoke these words. The final, court-approved, attorney-certified documentation arrived. I am no longer married.

It’s an end, to be sure. The end of meaningful, something beautiful, something painful, something
rich, something deeply significant.

All endings bring a sense of grief (even when you’re the one who has chosen such). There is a finality that is weighty and cannot be escaped.

Endings also signify new beginnings. That reality feels weightless; one that is unbounded, unrestrained, unknown, and unfettered. And I find myself, at least today, more compelled (and comforted) by others’ words instead of my own…

You’re searching…for things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings – there are no such things. There are only middles. (Robert Frost)

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, about having to change, about taking the moment and making the best of it – and all without knowing what’s going to happen next.

Delicious Ambiguity.
(Gilda Radner)

My life – yesterday and today – feels like a book. Yesterday I ended one chapter, even somewhat tragically. Today, I am anticipating what is yet to come, I turn the page and find the next one blank. A clean slate. White as snow. Anxious and excited for the pen to hit the page and create a new text, new plots, new characters, new experiences. What will this story yet tell?

The secret to a rich life is to have more beginnings than endings.(David Weinbaum)

There is a woman at the beginning of all great things. (Alphonse de Lamartine)

Every day is a fresh beginning, Every morn is the world made new. (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)

“It is finished.” And…it is just beginning.

May it be so.