Grace

Today was one of those "I am on top of the world" kind of days.  Yesterday was a HUGE feat for me.  For 162 days, over 1/3 of a year I have been allowing a pain to encompass my life. I have been fervently praying that God would allow me to be free.  I have been praying and learning to have enough faith to know that living in God's will is the best. 

Last night something inside of me just latched shut.  I was encountered by a situation that months ago would've been too difficult for me to bear. As soon as it happened I waited for the rush of heat, the instant tears to start unknowingly race down my cheeks.  I ran into the elevator to head back to my dorm and just stared at my reflection in the elevator door. Nothing happened.  I felt nothing, I didn't really care.  I was flabbergasted.  I got into my room, dropped my bag on the floor and just stood in the middle of my room thinking, "What had just happened?" It was as though someone had put my heart on ice so that I wouldn't feel the pain anymore, and locked it up.  The way that doctors put people in ice to keep them alive by slowing things down to keep them alive longer.  Ironically enough I found myself trying to cry, or feel the pain.  But nothing happened.  I didn't know what to do or how to feel.  I couldn't sleep.  I went for a walk.  I felt so different, in a weird scary way though, because it is a feeling that is new to me.  I felt pushed.  Like when some one pushes you into a pool.  You stand at the edge not really wanting to go in because you are comfortable with where you are, yet you know that you will be going in eventually.  Then you feel that push. You fall. You are surprised, shocked, scared.  It is in that moment of the fall in which you question what will happen: "Will I hit the bottom?" "Will I get water up my nose?" "Why did they push me in?" "Will the water be cold?" Then you break the surface and plunge in. The change is startling, but then you warm up to it and swim. 

The questions that swirled around in my mind were much like those of falling out of your own control. I thought, "Should I be relieved that for some reason the pain no longer throbs?" "Is this good?" "Why and how did this come on all of a sudden?" "Is it okay if I am happy about it and sad at the same time?" I don't know.  I am afraid to give this stage in my life a word by which to describe it.  Strangely enough however, the word that keeps coming to my mind is content.  About six months ago an old friend told me that I have to find true happiness myself, and that no one could do that for me.  He was right, and today, a day where I didn't think I could face another monotonous situation, a day full of regret, a day where I couldn't find the strength to want to go forward, I found joy.  

I am tired of waiting for life to begin, because it has begun, I need to live in the moments of life, because they are precious and fleeting.  There is this book I have been reading entitled "Cold Tangerines" this is a part that I really enjoyed in a chapter that the author calls "On Waiting." 

"I don't want to wait anymore.  I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day.  I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold.  The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab onto and extend to one another.  That's the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don't even see it, because I'm too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I am about to become.  The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting.  The Heismen Trophy winner knows this.  He knows that his big moment was not when they gave him the trophy.  It was the thousand times he went to practice instead of going back to bed.  It was the miles run on a rainy days, the healthy meals when a burger sounded like heaven.  That big moment represented and rested on a foundation of moments that had come before that."

Today thanks to all of the tiny moments that made it up for all that it is, has instilled in me the most wonderful freedom.