Where do I even begin? I feel like I should catch up our readers on what has been happening in my life, but there are details too sensitive to include. Beginning that way would just leave too many confusing voids.
There are some hard things happening. There are some beautiful things happening. I have all four of my beautiful children asleep in their beds. Everyone is healthy. Everyone is learning, and I have gotten to tell each of them very recently that I love them. That is a treasure to me.
But it is four o' clock in the morning, and I haven't slept a wink. That's from all those hard parts that are happening.
Gosh they leave me so confused. They just have a way of smacking me in the fat of the cheek every single time.
By this time of my sleepless night, I have read over some of my old posts and felt a little rejuvenation at the strength I found in earlier days in my life, but I'm just not kidding that the hard parts are wearing on me. They're starting to make me age. I looked in the mirror the other day and realized just how much my face has aged over the last few years. I don't even look like the same person to myself.
I'm tired.
There's no rest from the challenges I face. I will carry them in my satchel of daily experiences for the rest of my life. That promise (or threat) was even given to me recently - "for the rest of your natural life" this heart said to me. Thank you for making your intentions clear, heart that spoke to me. At least the heart was honest, right? Now at least I know what to expect. More hard things. More heart ache. More challenges that will cause other people to describe me as "strong" but will leave me feeling, once again, just depleted.
Even my joints hurt. Honestly, I'm preparing my life to speak to a doctor about it.
This life hurts, doesn't it? The really annoying thing is that the human experience contains a lot of injustice, so some lives include more pain than others. It's just true. There are people who live their entire lives so insulated that they are altogether unscathed compared to the battered scraped up souls that live right alongside them.
Does that make the lives of the bruised and used up ones less beautiful? Nay. Not at all. I'm not a fan of the volume of painful experiences that are included in my story, but I don't dare trade a single one of them. They have woven into something that has become me. They have twisted me and pulled me and stretched me into something that provides comfort for some and cover for others. They have melted away the frivolous parts of me. There's no fake left. I don't have the energy for it. What you see is what I really am.
And it isn't something not wonderful. My. life. is. wonderful. It makes me think of the analogy to which I alluded above - the one of a tapestry. So full of tangles and knots on one side. Chaos and disorder and confusion. The other side, however, reveals something so intentional...so beautiful...so perfect that it leaves the jaws of it's admirers hanging open.
I'm not something different or better than someone else. Please forgive me if that's what I seemed to say. I am one of many. You are too. Maybe you feel the way that I feel - that you don't happen to be one of those unscathed ones. Maybe you have hurt more hurts than what you see from those around you or maybe you just wonder if your life is a big fat waste - like it's being sabotaged somehow.
It's not. You're a tapestry...a big, tall, thick tapestry. Wait for your moment because, when it comes, you will be so glad that you have been woven as thick as what you are. The time will come when you see that all the painful kniving moments that passed through your being over and over made something that shows nothing but beauty. Try so hard, sweet hearts, to remember that in those weaving moments. You're so beautiful. The tapestry of your life is so beautiful because the one weaving it does it with intention. It may look like chaos to you, but it is all with a specific order. Look for the threads - the moments in your life that make your heart swell and give the muscles of your soul a break. They are there. Don't get lost in the side of the weaving that you can see. Know there's something bigger. Don't forget that your picture is like no one else's this is YOUR story. No one can replicate the intricacies woven through who you are. It is yours and yours alone. Look for the threads. Look for the beauty.
Know that, within every single day and within every part of your heart, there are many threads of beautiful. And I promise that one day you'll be able to see the picture they've created. Then, sweet hurting heart, you'll know just what it was all for.
