I woke like I wasn’t asleep, eyes wide open at 5:30. I tossed and turned all night, I need to stop eating cake at night, I’ve been so good at refraining. I’ve never been good at refraining; I’ve actually been very badly horrible at it. Woman, drugs, sugar, poor choices, self-indulgences, I’ve been very badly horrible at it over my lifetime.
Have you ever needed to shift gears, turn a page, start a new chapter? Stop going back to an old house, the scene of the crime, a time that was like a Sunday afternoon in the park? I’m notorious for that, ruminating on relics, dancing with my devils, feasting on forever’s that only exist in my head.
Growth is spiritic in human form. Weeds and trees grow so willingly, inch by inch, sprouting new leaves, spreading wide. An uncontrollable growth. Not stifled or stammered, free to reach the sky and sway in the breeze. Humans grow like a stutter, like a run-down Chevy low on gas, lurching, coughing and crawling its way to the pump. Like a slow walk to detention, like peeling off a Band-Aid.
I’ve walks to take, Band-Aids to pull, gas to pump. When the decision is made it can’t be accomplished fast enough, patience is for the calm and controlled and right now I feel neither. If I run right through the change, I will have what I seek on the other side! Like I know oh so much of what I will get. To think turning a page will instantaneously bring me the ideas I have about what it will be like is absurd. Everyone knows God has a wicked sense of humor.
If you pray for particulars, you might get what you want. You might get the house and struggle to make the payment. You might get the job and have to suffer a horrible boss. You might get the lover and live in a painful experience.
My God moves slow, it is a very busy God, it has many responsibilities. It tends to a tremendously vast garden, and the networking with all the other God’s – sheesh! It has little time for me, there are so many other flowers to tend to, so many to plant, so many to pull. I think it has me on a timer and comes around when it’s my turn for pruning and transplanting. Silly me to think I was the prize petunia, the one with the golden ticket, to think I thought I was specialist of specials.
My God moves slow to keep me humble and compassionate towards others. My God moves slow to teach me discipline, to teach me that moments should be appreciated, and a slow pain is a necessary experience. My God moves slow, methodically, because that is what wisdom and grace move like.
I on the other hand, not so elegant. I was not meant to be elegant; you can see that by the scars on my heart. Falling in love with everything that doesn’t last, falling in love with life. You can see this by my erratic movements, my crawl, walk, stumble, fall human nature. My life is not meant to be lived in elegance, with proper forks and spoons for the salads and the soups. I was meant to be a spork, a crazy concoction made up by the mad scientist I have been while painting my life.
Now here I am, standing on blank page. Bare feeted. Pens and pencils at the ready to write. Watercolors for the soft moments, markers for the heightened times. I’m good, I’m golden, I’ve no fear and daylights a burn’n! Let’s get this change going, lets run to the finish line. Let’s miss all the little moments that give beauty to the change, let’s move so fast that when I’m alone and have nothing left to focus on I don’t have to see myself…
Ahhh my sneaky God, my hilariously funny God. I see you, I see you giving me the opportunity to grow, to stair myself down in the reflection of you. Once again humbled by my obsession to control, to skip the line, to not do the work. Or is this the work? The realizing, the owning, the reflecting. I mean this is where change begins, right?
It’s getting foggy, misty mountain mornings in my mind, the scent of pine, the stillness. The realization that I’ve been writing a new chapter this entire time. That every moment of every day is a new page to draw upon, that the fluidity of my life is so smooth I can’t even feel it. I’ve been too busy kicking rocks and licking windows, playing in abandoned homes. I am not elegance, but my life is. Change is happening everyday around me; I am changing with every moment I experience...
WAIT!! To think that I thought I was turning a page!?
My life is not written in a book!
Typed up all smart like, with chapters and a glossary and an index. It’s written on a scroll with broken crayons and bold markers, with #2 pencils and calligraphy pens. It’s 6 miles long and 3 feet wide, ripped and tattered, glowing like the stars and bleached by a millennium in the sun. It’s a continuous flow. It’s singularly connected. It’s one experience leading to another and another after that.
I sit here searching for a way to end this train of thought, a punctuation of sorts. But there is no end to it. No matter how many endings I’ve put down, I’ve deleted them all. When I am open to the world around me, to my life and present for all my experiences, there is no beginning or end. There are no pages to turn, no Band-Aids to pull or to purposefully change what is happening. All I’ve to do is let go of what was and be in what is, as every moment is new.
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