awakening

Spring is teasing at the edges of my cozy winter world. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I’m ready to see it come. True, there has been a lift to my spirits as I witness the watery edge of blue peeking shyly out beneath the dark skirts of the morning sky earlier each day. I know better than to expect the season’s full advent here in the dark wilds of February. Yet the pale sunshine and mild winds that accompanied my walk yesterday afternoon were decidedly springlike, and not at all unwelcome.

Normally, I would be kneeling for a closer look at the signs of new life stirring just beneath the soil. Instead, I find myself cringing inwardly, clinging to the supposed safety of dark, hidden places. 

I came into this new year on a run, determined to leave brokenness behind me. Full of goals and plans, I adopted new habits and priorities at every turn. Certainly a deliberate choice of hopeful outlook would guard me against a further slump into discouragement. I was determined to embrace 2020 — not to mention my 40th birthday — with everything I had.

Then with all the cruelty of a hard frost, death and sickness swept in, laying their chilling fingers across loved ones on every side. All around me crouched loss, hardship, devastation. Suddenly my bright ambitions collapsed. Fears swept in on a cold wind, sapping my energy and stripping fragile hopes from their stems. Would I, too, lose someone close to me? Would aimless days spent empty and alone be the husk I left behind when eternity knocked at my own door?

There seems to be something in me that clings to weakness, darkness, hiddenness; it almost prefers suffering and finds an odd comfort in brokenness. Rather like a seed that feels safer underground — sheltered, obscure — yearning for the light while fearing the struggle to emerge. Above the soil lurk startling brightness, exposure, adverse winds blustering without remorse. Birth seems fraught with harsh realities. A new life thrust upon the world has no defenses against the glaring onslaught of sensations beyond.

In the dark of night, anxiety paints this picture in glaring colors: life is violent, cruel, unforgiving. It lures my shrinking soul to find its home in lonely places, threatening disaster if I should step beyond its suffocating grasp.

As long as I confess myself to be broken, weak, and wounded, I have a ready excuse to hide. I’m in recovery, after all, still grieving, and I freely accept grace as my covering. The kernel of truth is this: there is a good and proper season for hearts to lay buried as seeds, and no one has the right to force them out prematurely.

Yet there does come a season when even the most shattered hearts begin to heal, when the bandages are removed, exposing tender places to light and air again …

I ask myself, here in this creative space … Why do I want this: this writing life? I struggle with fears of exposure, of being fully known and surely rejected, while at the same time, I yearn to be seen, understood, appreciated. I have this insatiable need to be alone — to reflect, to contemplate, to drink in the quietness of a soul at rest — while also aching for connection, for intimacy, for union of spirit, soul, body. I feel things deeply, passionately, feverishly, yet I seek to numb the potency of these feelings with shallow routine and busyness, or escape into parallel worlds of story and entertainment that mimic depth while minimizing risk.

I am tiptoeing around the edges of my life rather than leaning in, afraid to submerge myself and experience the full weight of both glory and pain. More than ever now, I know the fragile state of my heart, how easily it can be crushed. Do I dare risk living again, that deeply? Or should I hang back, placating myself with the comforting lie of safety in the shallows?

Is there ever a case in which life is not a struggle? What courage it takes, just to be born! To press my head beyond the warm comfort of the familiar and into the shocking newness of the unknown … this is pain, and aching, and trembling risk.

Tentative breaths, tottering steps — something in my soul has collapsed, just when I was ready to fly. I can’t promise to emerge again with the same level of confidence I had only a few weeks ago. It may have been little more than bravado without a stable root. But there is light up ahead, beckoning me to keep climbing, however hesitant my stride.

Friend, have you been here, too? Knocked nearly breathless by the impersonal cruelty of this broken life? I am realizing all over again that my enemy is not gentle, patient, or forgiving. He doesn’t wait until I am standing strong before attacking; he takes my quivering knees out from under me before I ever regain my balance. Still, the word of my Beloved promises the righteous fall seven times yet get back up. My own filthy rags are as far from righteousness as darkness is from light. So I look to His pure, sweet righteousness to surround me like a cloak, upholding my delicate heart and granting me the courage to rise again.

Only the Lord knows the perfect timing to awaken His Beloved with the kiss of new life. In the stillness of my spirit, I believe I hear Him calling me now to come forth …