There are times when you feel like you are falling from two thousand stories up in the sky straight down to the ground. Your life is whizzing by and there is nothing to hold onto or save you. And then you hit the ground and your heart shatters into a thousand pieces.
But it is still beating.
Why is that? When our lives fall apart, our hearts keep beating, our lungs keep drawing in air. Why?
I don't know.
This post isn't about having the answers. It isn't even about understanding the questions. Because honestly,
I don't know.
I do know that I am the worst at packing. I dread it more than anything. Doesn't matter if it's towards something great or away from home, I hate packing. Within the last six months or so I have moved at least four times. That's a lot of packing. It's a lot of dreading.
Especially the moving to Seattle- I had the hardest time sorting things into boxes. Over four years of college I had accumulated more belongings than would fit into my car for my next journey. And there I sat at home in the end of those four years, trying to sort my life into-
Trash. Treasure. Give Away. To Seattle. Keepsake box at home.
For someone who hates packing, for someone who is indecisive, and for someone who is emotional over this transition, it was not an easy task. Well some of it was.
All of those trophies and medals I worked so hard for my entire life, every award I was consumed with earning and won every single time I set my eyes on it, every moment of perfection I was obsessed with-
Trash.
Every picture of past friends, every random moment forever captured and saved-
Treasure.
Some of it was easy because enough time had passed for me to see what was important. I could have never thrown away my trophies before that moment. I was too focused on their importance to see beyond that, to see how much unnecessary space they take up (but really, who designs trophies? They have awkward shapes). I was too focused on their importance to see that I was missing out on the beauty of taking a risk to make a mistake in order to risk making something beautiful and wonderful.
And the rest that I couldn't decide on?
I don't know.
And I created a box just for that. An- I don't know I'll figure it out later when my head is clearer and I understand more- box.
And every time I was home since then I would look through the box and see if any of it clearly belonged elsewhere. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it still doesn't.
Welcome to my life right now. I am a mess, and it's not okay. Someday I will be able to look back and tell you what was going on in my life, what was happening to me, how it changed me, and where I am because of it and despite it. But for now,
I don't know.
And that's all I do know. It hurts too much to sort it out right now, my head isn't clear.
A new friend just taught me how to crochet. It's a soothing action. You can get lost in it just like painting, writing... And I've learned some interesting things.
1. You can work for hours and hours crocheting, and if you let go of the hook and pull on the yarn, every single part you slaved over for hours will unravel. Every single time. The simplest of actions will undo everything you've been working towards.
I found this heartbreaking. I mentioned to her how awful it would be to set your project down for two minutes and come back to discover that someone else had pulled the yarn and destroyed everything. She agreed, but then pointed out that on the flip side...
2. When you make a mistake, you can always go back and fix it. You're not stuck with anything permanently.
Maybe that's how our lives are. We are constantly knitting our lives together and sometime we make a mistake. Or maybe someone unravels everything we've done. And even though the yarn isn't the same after that happens, it's not ruined. You can begin again. You can make something new. You are devastated, but the yarn shows you the truth- it can become something again. You are shattered and heartbroken, but your heart keeps on beating- life is not over.
For now, let's be honest though. I'm full of I don't knows. It's not okay. I'm not okay. I'm unraveled.
It is what it is and I can't stop that or fight it or pretend otherwise.
For now this is still a confusing thing for me, because it feels like it is ruined, it is over.
But I can't deny what the yarn and my beating heart are saying. That I will go on. Someday I will pick the tools up and begin creating again. Someday I will get up off the ground and marvel that I survived.
"We've all been searching for the five doppelgangers, right? Well eventually, over time, we all become our own doppelgangers. These completely different people who just happen to look like us. Five years ago? That girl was pretty great. But the doppelganger? She's amazing." - How I Met Your Mother
ps. Send any hugs, love, favorite quotes, good thoughts, and inspiration my way. This is me asking for your help, I assure you I need it. And one more thing? Thanks for being there. It means a lot to me.
(13) Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, (14) I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. - Phil 3:13-14.
ReplyDeleteTrue story: back when I was in high school I went to a youth evangelism event in the Houston Astrodome presented by Rev. Richard Hogue. At the time he was a very sought after and popular youth minister and he was doing these huge events that would draw thousands of people in one night from all over the country; kind of like the youth equivalent of Billy Graham. Well, you can imagine what it was like after being in a croud of tens of thousands of people when I found myself walking alongside him in the tunnel leaving the Dome. As we walked I was thinking to myself that this was my big chance to find out what God was thinking. I mean, surely Richard Hogue would know first hand, right?
So, I asked him my question.
"Sir?"
"Yes?"
He was walking briskly. I struggled to keep up.
"Could I ask you a question?"
"Sure? What is it?"
"How do I know if I'm really doing what God has called me to do? I mean, how do I know for sure I'm going in the right direction?"
He didn't slow down as he answered.
"You know when you're driving at night you turn your headlights on to see the road, right?"
"Yes."
My legs kept churning to keep up with him.
"Well, you can't see all the way to your destination. You can only see the road immediately in front of you. That's all you need to see for now. As you travel down the road, God will reveal to you what you need to see when you need to see it. OK?"
"OK..."
I slowed down. He kept walking. Then he was gone.
That was it? That was my Big-Talk-with-God? Headlights? I found myself wondering what devotional book he had pulled that nugget from.
But here's the thing. As trite as it may have sounded at the time, he was right. You see what you need to see when you need to see it. It's always been that way. As far as our travel through life is concerned, most of it is on a need-to-know basis, day by day. And if you've never been down that road before, every new encounter can seem disjointed, confusing, and unrelated.
But there is one more point you need to remember. Just because where you are at the present doesn't look like where you ultimately want to be, don't get discouraged. If you're planning to drive from Oklahoma to Sunset Beach, California, you'll have to drive through the Mojave Desert in Nevada. If you were to get concerned because the desert doesn't look like the beach, that would be silly. Where you are now doesn't have to look like where you're going because when you get where you're going you won't be where you are anymore.
Think about it. It makes sense.
So, all you need to do right now is to stop looking at your surroundings and check your map. Make sure you're still heading in the right direction. Then step on the gas! You'll be down the road in just no time!
God bless you, sweetheart. Hang tough.
-Uncle Bert
I got this note this week and I want to share.
ReplyDeleteWhatever your problem or challenge may be, laugh at it. Laugh long and hard.
Because you are forever and it is temporary.
Love you,
The Universe
Sending lots of good thoughts your way. You are amazing and the bumps in the road lead to more possibilities! Hugs, dawn Allen
“People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.”
ReplyDelete― Pema Chödrön
“…feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.”
― Pema Chödrön
“Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody's eyes because you feel you haven't got anything to lose--you're just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We'd be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.”
― Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living
“We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy. (10)”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart
There comes a time when the bubble of ego is popped and you can’t get the ground back for an extended period of time. Those times, when you absolutely cannot get it back together, are the most rich and powerful times in our lives. (Shambhala Mountain Center’s Learning to Stay, 2003)
"Life is a series of 'hellos' and 'goodbyes', I'm afraid it's time for 'goodbyes' again...
ReplyDelete- Billy Joel "Say Goodbye to Hollywood"
Amber,
ReplyDeleteI have just seen your blog for the first time. Reads like your heart was cracked open. This must have been (still is? though probably it has moved by now) a very hard place to sit. But I hope you are able to sit with it, let it move through. Your writing is wide open. Hope you are doing a lot of that too.
Sending love,
Marnie