let the words spill out honestly

I'm trying to find my voice.

Yes...in my fifties, and trying to find my voice...still.  

In having a reserved and cautious personality, I have often found it difficult to say out loud my true thoughts and feelings, especially in the moment, but I have grown and become stronger and learned to speak up.  I am proud of some particular moments when I've stood up, to the surprise of some, and spoken out my thoughts and said out loud what I really felt.

A few months ago my husband sent me a link to a video on Facebook that was circulating and it so resonated with me and struck such a deep place within me that I sent it to my daughters and to my close friends.  It was me--in so many ways, it was me.  Everything You Ever Wanted is on the Other Side of Fear.  Then, a few weeks later, in a completely coincidental event, I came across a video that I would not have otherwise sought out and that again struck such a deep place within me that it brought tears to my eyes and I found myself watching it over and over and over again in the days and weeks that followed, turning up the volume, listening with earbuds, taking in the message, over and over.  I was embarrassed to tell anyone--it was a video by a young, beautiful, pop-star diva--and it was bringing me to tears.

Someone was trying to tell me something. 

Then a close friend at work sent me an email with another link...you have to hear this, she said--another young, beautiful, pop-star singing about bravery and saying what you want to say--it was all adding up. Find your bravery.

Find your voice...say what you mean to say...ROAR if you have to...but find your voice. 

It's a challenge so many of us find ourselves up against, especially as girls and women.  So here's to us--we who are challenging the world with our voices.  Here's to my 81-year-old mother speaking up for herself in ways she never has before and learning to manage a checkbook and pay bills for the first time in her life.  Here's to my daughter who has found a peace and centeredness she didn't know she had--within her very own heart.  Here's to my shy, quiet 8-year-old granddaughter who wants to sing like Adele.  Here's to my step-daughter and my daughters-in-law who are changing their lives for the better by being brave, speaking up for themselves, and challenging the world with their voices, thoughts, and feelings. Here's to my friend who finally spoke up for herself and told the truth--and then made a very difficult and risky decision that will change her life forever.  Here's to me for speaking back to the vulgar customer at work, for speaking up in my family and with my friends.  For not remaining silent anymore.

Clearly, even the young, famous, rich, and beautiful among us have not escaped this great challenge either. Pop star, working mom, old, young, rich, poor, beautiful or homely...let's link arms and re-courage each other.  Each of us is facing great battles--within and without.  Let's find our voices together.

show me the currents that carry the sea

As I grow older, I continue to face challenges to my thinking and to my faith.  I must continually ask myself when I feel intense anxiety over faith issues or life's disappointments, "Is God bigger than this?"  The challenges of my earlier years were very different...not less than...just very different.  The challenges of these later years are broader.  The questions seem to cover more ground.  The answers have to cover more ground too. Shallow answers do not suffice.  Answers that bubble on the surface are not enough.  Give me the rivers that well up from the depths.  Show me the currents that carry the sea.

a voice

And just when you think all is lost and that there is no possible way to move forward, a door quietly swings open.  It swings open and suddenly after having run down dark hallways desperately trying locked doors, one gently swings open seemingly on its own accord and you find yourself standing in a doorway flooded with quiet light and you hear a voice say...this is the way, walk in it.

God moves.  God lifts the veil, floods in like a river, swings open the door you could never find, much less open, and there you stand in hope and light. 

I can't prove it--but I know it.  It's happened too many times in my life to be random, too often to be coincidence, enough times for me to come to believe that there is Someone who hears me.  Someone who intervenes.

It's not enough to eradicate all doubt because there have also been many, many times when doors did not swing open and only the tightest and darkest of rat holes was provided as the way out...but even then, a way was provided. 

Too many times to be coincidence, too many times for me to not believe and hope, too many times for me to not pray...not enough times to erase all doubt.  Not enough times to make me think I have this under control.  Not enough times to make me think I can do this alone.

When darkness veils His lovely face, 

I rest on His unchanging grace;

In every high and stormy gale, 

My anchor holds within the veil.

sleep...He is awake

I can't even remember right now what all has happened over the past month--but I can tell you that I feel like I've been crawling through a mine field on my belly wondering at what moment I was either going to implode upon myself or explode into a thousand psychological and emotional fragments.  This period of my life is certainly among the top three most prolonged stressful times of my adult life.

This morning as I sat in my reading chair, the house tranquil and silent in the early morning hours, I read...have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones, and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.  God is awake.   (Victor Hugo)

If you can believe those words--and I do--there is a sweeping, swelling, all-encompassing peace that comes.

He is awake...

the sea is still deeper

In so many ways the world seems to be getting smaller and smaller and with technology and the media and the constant feed of information from around the world, it feels like everything is happening in my own backyard.  The weight of the world starts pressing in on me, suffocating me if I let it. 

Taking in the expanse of the sea lifts that weight.  Did you make the sea? God asks me. Do you keep the gulls in the air?  Do you send the storms and waves to carve out the caves and rocks that, to you, have been here for eons and eons?  All those problems you hear about have been going on for millenia and all the while these ancient bastions of rock and sea have been keeping vigil, unmoved by the problems of the world.  Does the world seem to be falling apart to you?  It has fallen apart before in the eyes of men and women whose only perspective is from their narrow fleeting view from their own lives.  

But I live on, God says.  I live on and it's not over until I say it's over.  Look up!  The sea is still deeper than any man has seen, the sky is still wider than any man can take in at one time, the trees are still older than any one man's lifetime, the rocks will still be here even if the entire world economy fails because I live on and nothing will bring me down.  It's not over until I say it's over.

in the middle of a war

When you're in the middle of a war, you cannot see the ultimate outcome, only the mud beneath your feet and the treacherous minefield that lay before you.  Sometimes when you look back at previous battles, at defining moments of your life when you were fighting for something, you can see that if you had given up at the moments when you were filled with hopelessness, you would have lost the war.  So in retrospect, those defining moments become your great acts of courage, the acts that won the war. But in the moment without the glow and warmth of having triumphed, there is only the mud beneath your feet and the crawling forward on your belly when you have little hope of ever making it through to the other side.

Only when the smoke and gunfire are over do we really know which of our acts turned the tide for victory or for failure.  Only the end will tell us which moments were the defining moments, the moments that changed our lives and the lives around us for good or for ill. 

While the mud sucks at our every step, we wonder...is this a war I will eventually lose?  will I battle but not live to see the victory?  should I give up now and move on?  will I ever see the victory and freedom I'm longing for?  what if the tide turns today and tomorrow I find myself standing with arms outstretched in the light of victory?

Seven years ago I was in a war.  I fought heaven and earth, but no one else really knows.  It was not a visible war.  No one saw me charging with my bayonet or crawling through the brush to ambush the enemy.  No one saw me wiping the blood off the wounded in the middle of the night. I still don't really know how much my fighting determined the outcome, but I know that I fought and that the war was eventually won.

I'm in a different battle these days and I don't know what the final outcome will be. But when faced with the choice now to give up the fight or to keep marching through the sucking mud, I sometimes hear a voice challenging me...what if the next moment wins the war?  what if tomorrow the bloodshed ends?  can you afford to give up now?

tidal wave

I am growing older and can't stop it.  I feel more and more helpless, more and more overwhelmed by life, by the 6:00 news, by noise and clutter and flashing lights and honking horns, by the Internet, by too many choices and decisions, by the clamoring of my own inner needs.  I am only in my fifties.  If I'm feeling this now, what on earth is it going to be like in my sixties? seventies? eighties?  Will I even still be here?  It all gives new meaning to what it means to be "out of control."  I'm realizing that its not just other family members who are beyond my control, or their choices, or co-workers or finances--it's every tiny parcel of every day.  I do not know what is coming today or the next hour or the next minute.  How do you stay open hearted and exposed to the good and the beautiful when you're startling and flinching whenever there is a sudden noise or that unexpected phone call or that physical sensation that you're trying to manage? 

Late in the morning I felt hungry and I was out running errands and decided to get one of my favorite meals.  I stood in line pretending that my whole life was in order, not letting on that I felt weak as a kitten and vulnerable as a naked baby bird.  I bought my meal...have a nice day, the girl behind the counter said.  I needed quiet, so I drove to the river and sat in the car and watched as people here and there fed the geese and pigeons. 

I took a bite of my food and watched a man and a woman and three young girls set their picnic out on the picnic table.  The girls threw bread crumbs to the birds.  I chewed my food but felt a tidal wave of grief welling up and out of my soul.  Stay with it, I told myself.  Look at it.  Feel it. I stopped chewing and stared at my food and let it come, swelling up and up like water filling a cavern, rising and suddenly spilling over the top until the tears were dripping down and I had to gasp to breathe. 

It was my daughter and all that's been lost, it was my oldest's suffering I had recently witnessed,  it was about my brother being gone--we are not five anymore, we are four--no more chances with him.  He's gone. It was about the stress and relentless strain of the last three years. It was about aging and about loneliness--these moments that are lived out of the deep wells of our lives are always lived out alone.  They can't be shared.  The depth and breadth and the waves and currents are too much to get out in words. 

I listened to the music playing on my car stereo.  I listened to one song over and over.  I pressed the replay button--three times, five times, ten times, and let the grief spill out.  I listened and watched the three girls feed the geese and then the gulls--the gulls riding and sailing the wind, spiraling up, riding silently down, now this way, now that, a mass of gray and white living leaves riding the wind.  I let what was sealed up inside come to the surface and gasp. 

Having time alone and having the quiet and giving myself space and privacy to let the waters well up and spill out was what I needed. When the waters rise, the leaves and debris float on the surface and finally are washed out when the waters spill over the top.  It leaves the basin cleaner.  A clean basin is easier to manage--less debris. 

It doesn't change any of the circumstances that cause me grief but it does allow me to accept them and make room for them without trying to control them.  It allows for the co-existence of pain and peace.  It takes that festering wound, sealed over with taut, red and swollen skin that's too tender to touch and brings it into the healing air, let's it begin to heal.

more sure than ever before

"Life is complex...But if I tell you that when I lost my way, I found it again by following the moss growing on the north side of trees, I will almost certainly have to warn you that in the redwood forests there are many trees covered with moss on all sides...I hope you will abandon the urge to simplify everything...[and] appreciate the fact that life is complex."

                                                             --M. Scott Peck, M.D., Further Along the Road Less Traveled

During the final years of my first marriage, which ultimately died and ended in divorce, one of the most difficult things I had to face in myself was the fact that I had for so long made excuses, rationalized, provided (weak) explanations, covered up, and in many other ways pretended...until I couldn't hold the facade together anymore.  It was a shock to me when, unable to hold the mask up any longer, I began to tell the truth, and then discovered how many people had seen the truth long before I did.

The fact that I could not or would not face the truth and, therefore, could not or would not see the truth, shook me to the core and still affects me today.  It shook my confidence in my ability to see things as they really are.  Life has become much more complex to me since my divorce and since I've gotten older.  I am less sure of more things...more sure of a few things.

There have been too many times in my life now when I have made judgements about others only to discover how terribly misguided my judgements were.  There have been too many times in my life now when I was positive I was seeing clearly, only to discover I wasn't seeing clearly at all.  There have been too many times now in my life when I've lost hope, only to see the impossible happen right before my eyes.  I've been dogmatic about beliefs that now 20...30...40 years later, I've given up altogether.

Now in my fifties, dealing with new challenges...aging, relationships that I thought would last forever, now gone...I am less sure about many, many things...and yet, more sure about a few things than ever before.