I can see inside of you

When Really Big Life things are going on, I find that even though these big things are so often stressful, I am more at ease about the little things. I mean, there isn’t any room for a long conversation about why a lot of sugar is bad for your body. They know this already and good grief, they don’t even have that much sugar to consume around here. So I get over it. I say yes. We move on. Later they eat broccoli with dinner and I don’t even have to make them. There’s give and there’s take. There’s push and then pull.

There’s pain and then grace. There’s a marshmallow Peep at the beginning of the day and a whole pile of carrots at the end. Only one is actually even food, but so be it.

Maybe one day I’ll tell the rest of the story here. Maybe I won’t. Is that okay with you? I used to say it all and more and then some. And you might be wondering if I relapsed or if we’re moving or if my marriage is falling apart. I mention Big Life Things but leave it at that. Because I want to write, but I feel very unsure of sharing more than words.

That maybe didn’t make sense.

No worries, no one is sick. Not that I know of, anyway. Some of us have  been, and in a way Asher’s hydrocephalus always keeps medical sickness on our radar. And in a way, my alcoholism always keeps sickness on my radar. And in a way, being human means we are always parts fully whole and healthy and parts longing and tired. Sometimes that feels like sickness.

Getting healthier is a profound difference in every day. You can feel that every day is a new beginning in a whole new way.

I am coming out of a fog, of longing and exhaustion I didn’t even fully realize I was in. The scales are falling from my eyes. I am reaching up and lifting my own veil, to see. Sometimes when that happens you feel like you’re leaving victims all over the place, in your wake. Like facing your truths is an affront. So I try to give myself too much power, imagining I am the Center and no one else can continue on minding their own business. But they can and they do and for now all I can do is keep stepping out of myself and back to myself.

I am loved. This is the only way I can see inside of you and through you and feel you, and then love you with everything I’ve got.

When I quit drinking, I felt this, I suppose. This thing they call the Pink Cloud phase of sobriety. Where you just feel so freaking ALIVE. Freedom comes and peace slips in ever so quietly. And then for over four years I tried to keep it, but it was slippery like a fish, and though I continued to not pick up a bottle, I was picking up shame, still. Like an old friend who won’t get off my back, shame was keeping me stuck because how come I couldn’t just FIX all the other things? How come I couldn’t keep it all the same and make it what it “should” be? Why wasn’t God doing that? Where were the miracles after the miracle?

They were in every day no matter what, and I saw them, yes, the miracles. I focused on them. I even used them as a distraction from what I refused to do or see, or to make right. Or to allow to be redeemed. I held all my cards close and smirked at the dealer–a past of choices that brought me right where I was. So I said to me, Well, you made your bed, so…

Then one morning God was all, Wake up. Get up. Let go. Stop it. Stop torturing yourself. This is not freedom. You might as well just drink, my girl. You don’t deserve living every day like this, so heavy. 

Oh…so there it was. We can do it all wrong and think that means we have to pay forever and God can speak something Other than that over all of it, but it’s going to hurt like hell. And then I’m going to walk through it until I can’t walk anymore and I’m going to wake up I don’t know how long from now and see that it was so good. All of everything. All the years I walked a thousand detours.

Detours can lead back home. Sometimes they lead back to a home you cannot have possibly planned or imagined. Maybe even back to start but with all the lessons you picked up from all the people and places. It’s beautiful.

I have this gift now, and after all these years of longing, I refuse to do anything other than accept it and finally, finally allow myself happiness. I punished myself for decades. That’s right, decades. I could not fully agree to or see my worth. And I write about God and I pray to God and I over-think the ways  of God and He is smiling and shaking His head. He’s sitting with me and watching me dig around for the wrong set of keys, cause I can never find them. And He knows this is just how I am and He loves me this way. He makes me better, at loving and living.

That kind of love can’t be received until you let yourself off the hook. And I don’t know that we can even make a decision to let go of ourselves without Someone stepping in to wake us up, maybe even with something so big and mysterious it cannot be mistaken for anything other than a big shout of ENOUGH. It is finished.

It is finished. That’s what has happened in the last couple of weeks. Such a big thing that it can’t be mistaken.

Sunday is coming.

Sunday is coming.