Melancholy

Writing is, for me, a therapy of sorts. It's the place I can work out my complicated questions, flesh out my thoughts and come face to face with myself. I suppose it is telling that it has been 8 months since I spent any time writing for the pure exploration of it.

Yet, today I found myself in grave need. Opportunities to learn and grow are not what I had hoped and for the first time in a long time I find myself just plain sad. Anger, pain .. they materialize for so many women as tears of sadness. For so long I have had the false armor of medication to absorb the blows of life's disappointments and loss. As I attempt to go it on my own, it is another thing entirely to fully experience the pain of rejection and the sadness of realization that those for whom you would give your heart and soul are not willing to put their trust in God working through you.

So, tonight, I read. Books have always been my best escape, my surest teacher and my kindest friend. I dearly love the words of Glennon Doyle Melton and her transparent honesty as she bares her humanity to the world ... eating disorder, addictions and all. I found these words particularly profound this evening,

"So for me, it's not a question of better. It's about a daily choice; the constant battle to listen to Love and silence Fear. Of course, even though I choose Love daily, I can still hear the reverberations of Fear's voice, like a bell that keeps echoing even after it's been stilled. Right now I am neither Fear nor Love, but the one who chooses between them. However, I have a feeling that after years of choosing Love, after decades of ignoring Fear and turning into Love, I will turn into Love. I pray that she and I will become one, that eventually all the words that come out of my mouth will be her words. And that when I slip into the arms of God, it will be as if there were no break at all in our eternal conversation. When I die, God will look at me and say, 'Now where were we, Darling?'"

And this ...

"There are only two lives we might live; our dream or our destiny. Sometimes they are one in the same, and sometimes they're not. Often our dreams are just a path to our destinies. My dream was to be an adoptive mother, but my destiny is to mother my three children, to be a wife, sister, friend, and daughter, and to speak hope boldly to you. My destiny is to remind you to look up from the castles you're building in the sand long enough to notice the cathedrals that God's building all around you, without you ... while you dream your dreams, he's busy building your destiny. And there is as much beauty in your destiny as there was in your dream. Let go and believe that whatever it is, it will be beautiful."

From Carry On Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

So when one dream dies, one door closes (pick you clique) ... keep your eyes open for your destiny.

Or, for tonight, simply let the sadness be. Grieve the loss but rest in the assurance that we are called forward from death into new life.

Always.