Lifting

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Sometimes a fog rolls in heavy. All at once with an overnight blanketing of the landscape. Vision cut short without any warning.

Other times, it’s boiling-a-frog style. Slowly increasing morning by morning without enough difference from one layer to the next to cause any great alarm. Until one day, it’s been 20+ months since your last post in this space. And you realize the rising sun hasn’t burned off enough of the weight of it each day to give any relief.

It’s thick now. And I let it happen.

I WAS aware of the silence of my voice. I simply didn’t have the words.

Even this is not fully true. I CHOSE not to FIND the words.

It didn’t just stop posting. I stopped writing. I stopped reading. Stopped looking. Stopped listening. Stopped noticing.

Inside the fog, life’s Crayola-box of hues get mixed into one solid gray. Even when the light pierces through a bit, it’s only to lighten the shade, not split it.

Dimmed. Every life experience just a little bit muted. Like reaching out with a numbed limb unable to fully grasp. Still present. Still grateful. Still alive.

But muffled.

****

I honestly didn’t remember using the word in conversation with one who allows me to speak honestly about my life. It was May. Spring. The season of the bursting forth of new life. And even as we belly laughed together — like we always do — there was a fog over both of us.

Months later she asked, “Are you finding more color these days?”

Color.

As something to be Found.  Unearthed. Discovered. Hunted.

As something to cut through a gloomy mass of gray.

It should not have been a surprise that color can live in the fog, too. I didn’t have to look far. With the ribbons and wreaths and baubles of Christmas, I remembered to see it.

Which is how COLOR became my One Word for 2018. And my mission for the coming days.

To seek COLOR. To let it seek me. And, in the seeking, to lift a fog.

Until all that remains is an unobstructed view of my already abundant life.

When Spring Comes Reluctantly

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I’ve been working against a deadline.

On Monday I will have completed another year of life. 42 of them so far. Another circle around the sun. Another cycle of life. Another end. Another beginning.

It has not been lost on me that the day falls immediately after Easter this year. It did the same 11 years ago when I was cradling a week-old baby in Sunday services. How fresh a resurrection message falls on days like these.

Emerging from Darkness. New Life.  A Birth Day.

In preparation for such a day – especially against the backdrop of Lent – I could not help but think on the need for some dying in my life. On the giving up. The letting go.

What needed to die to make room for new life?
What was I not willing to carry forward into my 43rd year?
Where was my surrender less than everything?

I often do my best work against a deadline.

But the frost on budding trees tells me this. Sometimes Spring comes reluctantly.

It comes in fits and spurts. It comes in fully blooming pear trees outside the tightly closed windows where the furnace has turned back on. It comes in pollen-covered sidewalks traversed by coat-covered people.

Spring does not bow to a deadline. Awakening comes in its own time.

I, too, am coming reluctantly to the turning of a page. As glorious is the spring, the winter lingers still.

There is more dying to be done.

There will be celebration over the coming days. Family. Easter. Birthday.
There will be warm days and deep laughter and lots and lots of life.
There will be Spring.

But deep at the roots – where the darkness never eases – it is the breaking  open that lives on still.

There is no deadline on that.

for the promise of sweet breezes

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I fight the survivor instinct that tells me to revive.

There is a time to die.

My four decades of doing things my way have brought me no closer to the prize – to the wideness of grace, to the deep well of peace, to the loftiness of lightness in my being.

It’s time to stop doing. And start dying.

Some things are a swift and merciful kill. So many others linger right on the edge. My will. My way. It gasps for breath and begs for salvation.

Oh, how it wants more time with me. But as my Jesus himself modeled, the only path to salvation is through death.

Spring is not as sweet without the winter.
New is meaningless if there never has been an old.
Resurrection never comes without first the dying.

And so it turns. Each tick of the clock marching back around to itself.
Circle after circle after circle.

Daily. Moment by moment. My will; my way; my striving; my doing.

It dies.

And from its decay blooms a more glorious way. Higher. Deeper. Wider than my striving could ever have imagined.

*********

Tightly still tucked upon itself.
The bud not ready to bloom.
I think for a moment I am her.
But, no, she is not yet me at all.

Go lower. Past the leaves. Down the stem. Under the surface.
Into the darkness.
I am not bloom, but seed.

Tightly still tucked upon itself.
Refusing to unfold.
Unwilling to die.

The breeze it carries a memory. Of sweet daisy blooms.
Into the soil it penetrates.
And the decaying seed – for the sake of a promise – releases just a bit of its skin.

The tiniest sip of living water expands me beyond today’s bindings.
There is no option but to crack.

To unfold.
For More.

To make room.
For Life.

Go for Launch

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space-shuttle-atlantis-10511-1920x1200
I spent my day at Kennedy Space Center.
And beyond the wonder and awesomeness of it all, I kept coming back to this thought…
It’s the dreaming and “could we really” that takes all the guts.
It’s the planning and the testing that takes all the stress of trial and error.
It’s the liftoff that takes all the energy.
Once you get into orbit, the travel takes care of itself.

All the fuel. All the boosters. All the fire. All the smoke. All the umph is required at the start of anything. Overcoming the gravity and inertia of status quo is the absolute hardest part of any process.

But there comes a point, sometimes a sudden one, where moving through space and time is nearly effortless. Where the circling of the Earth is natural and smooth.

It took a lot of jet fuel to get me to today. Years before the boosters were even ready to fire. More during the countdown. Only to be met with the body-punishing exit from the place that held me down for far too long. An escape from this atmosphere takes everything you’ve got. And then some.

But I’m starting to see a day where that world fading away in my rearview mirror. Its pull waning.

It’s more floating than flying. More peace than push & pull.

Just maybe, I’m on my way to finding an orbit.

 

What journey awaits you, friend? The energy it takes to get there will be Immense. Expensive. Exhausting.

And Temporary.

So start the countdown and do not fear the launch. The reward is already waiting.

There’s Only One Size of Brave (Brave Every Day)

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There are many varieties of brave. But only one size.

Every brave is big.

That’s one of the things I’ve discovered during October. During the Brave Every Day series. During write (most) every day. During reflecting on the word brave. My own and that of others.

Getting out of bed in the morning. Brave.
Sharing your story. Brave.
Listening with out Speaking. Brave.
Trying something new. Brave.
Forgiving yourself for being stuck. Brave.
Asking for help. Brave.
Admitting you need a different kind of help. Brave.
Giving help. Brave.
Saying No. Brave.
Saying Yes. Brave.

They are all Brave. They are all Big.

There is no possible way to NOT be Brave Every Day.

Living is Brave.