Stone cold black dust that is disappearing on the wings of the wind and is all that remains of the past fifteen years.
A day that once held beauty and hope and ecstatic joy has been reduced to a day smudged with the embers of years gone by. My "I Do" has forever been erased and replaced by the question of "What's Next?". My grief over loss is no longer the guttural cries from a drowning soul, but has become more like the quiet tears shed behind closed doors.
Today, I stand here with cheeks wet and palms open, balancing both the grief of loss and also the hope of a Phoenix rising out of these murky ashes. I hold both the relief of my salvation and freedom and the impatience of something better. I am still walking the edgy road of forgiveness while securing the good memories from my past. I am embracing my healing while also igniting a new flame of hope. I had no idea how or what to feel today, and apparently, it was a lot more than I was ready for. It probably did not help that I actually crossed paths with Clay today of all days, yet, the heaviness of this day compounded with this dry wilderness season became an incredible tangle within my heart. The hurt, the rejection, and the injustice of it all made themselves known as I worked and walked through my day, being constant companions and a releaser of tears. This mile marker has now become just another day on the calendar. It is now a mosaic of all of the beautiful, ordinary moments that I am blessed to experience as I try to frame the past hurt with the gratitude of my many blessings. I'm sure people wonder why I mark this time, why I write my soul into the the minutes of this particular day. I write and remember because it is important to me. This day was etched into the core of an era of my life. I write to feel, to remind me of who I am and where I have been. I write to remind myself that the trauma of today and this past year do not negate the goodness and the blessings of time gone by. I write so I do not repeat. I write to give myself grace to feel and grieve and remember that the best is still yet to come. I write to remember I am not alone. I write that my grief might be a light for someone else. I write because my soul sometimes needs a language to release its desperate song. I write because I hold a glimmer of hope that one day this special date will be replaced and a new era will be born.
August tenth...over and out.
