strength to strength.

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. Psalm 84:5

If I had to describe my current state to someone, I think I would say my soul is paralyzed and my body is on permanent auto-pilot. I would say that I feel nothing, but that would be a lie. These days I seem to feel everything, so acutely and in such a deep manner that it makes it hard to breathe. Feeling is excruciating sometimes isn't it? Our emotions rub raw until our heart is bleeding and our bones are aching, and we don't think that it is possible to take in so much pain. But then we do, and every time we aren't quite sure we are going to escape alive.

I used to jump into those emotions, feel everything naked and free. I didn't know how to boundary myself, how to separate from the burdens of others. Some days it felt like I could feel every nerve, every flinch of the emotional whip that kept my counterparts running for safety. Because isn't that what we all want? To feel safe and loved, to know that our hurts can be contained by another and not rejected, to know that someone is still reaching out with an open hand despite what we've brought to their doorstep?

Either way we journey on, holding our sorrows as if they are our prized possessions--afraid to put them down lest we lose ourselves to the chaotic tide that threatens to pull us under. We are delicate, on edge knowing that at any moment it may all be washed away around us. So we find ways to be brave, or rather to put ourselves back together just long enough until we can fall apart once again.

And we call this living. 

Going from one thing to the next, until we realize that life does not get easier--we just learn better survival skills. 

Because it's all a wilderness, and safe havens are hard to find. And we want to bunker down, build a fire and watch the flame burn out till all is dark, all is safe. But we can't, because we have to survive. We have to pick ourselves back up, find ways to go on living.

And we are so very afraid. We feel frayed around the edges, vulnerable and exposed, as if all our skin had worn thin and there was nothing left to protect our fragile bodies from the elements. It seems as though everyone is looking, waiting, watching as we become wide eyed and hysterical, tumbling through the wreckage of our lives looking for anything that will ground us, anything that will remind us, anything that will let us feel like the world is not spinning out of control. 

Everything feels impossible in this place. The resistance alone makes us feel that we would rather die than try to fight the fear that courses through our veins with such intensity, poisoning every hope we had that life could be manageable. It seems that we cannot change, cannot grow courage out of the hollow space that has only ever echoed our firm belief that we will never be enough. 

But what if instead of choosing to believe that we aren't we choose to believe that we are? What if we always, always choose hope over despair, promise over prosperity, life over death? Would it be a life wasted, if we only found out that it was all dark in the end? Because hope doesn't always mean an outcome, sometimes it is a state of being. That there is hope in our ability to withstand pain, and keep on grasping for joy and light and life even when death threatens to squeeze it all out of us. Even when it feels that the walls are closing and the truth is setting in and it's not worth it to go on trying anymore. We must listen to that still, small voice, we must go from strength to strength, we must set our hearts on pilgrimage. 

Though the journey is long, and our heads are heavy, we must put one foot in front of the other and keep looking up. We must hope beyond hope--we must believe that our moments matter. That the outcome does not define the journey, that though we don't know what the hell we are doing we refuse to rest in the confines of hell. 

Feel the fear, but reach for courage. Build a shelter, weather the storm. We need the rain to keep growing, though at times we feel we will surely drown. 

God never wastes our pain. Let's not waste our hope. 

make hope.

I've lost myself these days. I feel my soul drifting farther and farther away from everything around me, falling silently into a fog that thickens every day. I'm not sure what to blame it on really. So much has happened in these last four months that it's hard to place the blame. All I know is that I woke up today and felt like a shadow of myself, and I'm not sure how to get back to living.

It's different than the depression that I've experienced in the past. I'm less surprised by the feeling, black and sticky and suffocating like always. I don't feel panicked by it, I'm not fighting. In fact I think I've given up. Lost hope. And it's not that I don't believe there is hope to be found, it's just that I'm too tired to find it. To go looking for it, because sometimes it's so damn hard to find. I've given up the battle and I'm too weary to even wave the white flag of peace.

So I lay down, and stare at the world as it passes me by.

Sometimes, I miss who I was. I look back at the two years I had before here, and I see such joy, such ambition. Even as I moved to New York, I felt a passion and a promise that I was where I was supposed to be.

Then the universe met my belief with a resounding knock-out that left me face down and heartless. The hope that I had splattered the walls around me, dripping down and drying out, the last reserve of what was left. And so I died. Inside and out, as everything within and around me became grey and lifeless.

So I walked in this fog, seeing but not feeling, taking in but not touching. And what I saw did not move me, but left me paralyzed instead. I stopped engaging, because to engage meant to hurt. It meant I had to reconcile and change, it meant I had to work. And I did not think that I could work to watch one more thing fail, to see one more loss in my life.

Because to lose what you have worked so hard to keep is like losing air to breathe as you drown--you see it happening yet you can't do anything to change it, watching all you love go to waste as you die.

But the thing about life is we only have two choices--to succumb to the waves or find a way to stay afloat. It's not about whether we live or die--that's all relative. It's whether we are choosing to swim or not--whether we choose to move forward towards land no matter how dismal the chances we will make it may seem. Because either way we are going to die--but I want to die living.

People often tell me I have a pretty smile. It's a nice compliment, and I try to take it gracefully. Most people don't know that I have nine cavities. I went for twenty-three years of my life never having one, and then somehow managed to gain almost a dozen in one visit. I still to this day wonder whether or not the dentist was a liar--seeing damage where there actually was none. I should have gotten a second opinion. But the fact is I didn't, and now I live with nine metal fillings that will one day lead to what I am sure to be a full set of dentures. But none the less I take the compliment and smile anyway because really that's all there is to do.

And isn't life like that sometimes?  We smile even though it's not real. We want to pretend and play along with others, so we do what we need to get through the pleasantries. But inside we are screaming, gasping for air. Asking anyone to save us, to make us feel anything. To lift the fog and pump blood back into our veins, to shatter our paralyzed features and warm our souls once again.

But no one else can do that for us. Only we can.

And we will. Because when we are all alone in the middle of the deepest waters, we remember what we are made of. We find the strength to move forward in the shadowed corners of our being, and we begin to swim again. And while we aren't sure if we'll make it and don't know what we'll find once we arrive, we will know that we did not waste our living. We did not throw away our precious breaths or still our beating hearts willingly.

We made hope where there was none, and let it be the anchor for our souls.

And thus we believed once again.