The shape of a life

 

It's been one of those brimming over weeks, the kind that don't come around as often for me any more, where I'm struggling to find space in all the moments to tuck away and write.  The honest truth is, I haven't even known what I would write, only squirmed beneath the gentle pressure of things filling up and not being able to get out Something. Whatever that something is. 

I've been writing nearly every day in my little black composition notebook, this is true. And it's been good. But I miss here, too. It's going to take me awhile, I think, to balance my beautiful-rubbish-writing with my growing-a-seed-writing. I'm so fresh into it, and yet already I can see, it's a lovely, lonely affair. 

This week there have been the chiropractor appointments for my husband, the extra chores around the house, the waiting to hear from insurance, the beginning to shop around for a car. We've celebrated four years since we've been together, on an old fuzzy blanket down by the lake dining on turkey sandwiches and reminiscing about that night he and I took our first step in becoming a We. There have been talks of dreams and stirrings of big changes we are both desiring.  And there have been my own rumblings beneath the surface. A passion is rising in me that isn't exactly new, but it might as well be, for it's catching me delightfully by surprise, how long it's been in the making. I hear it in my voice, the few times I've voiced it out loud to ones that I love, that nervous constricting of my vocal chords in sheer excitement; that sound of life and hope that has been dormant for a long, long time. I hear it and it sounds old and young, familiar and strangely outside myself, in a voice that's grown up a bit since the last time it came around.

A dear friend said quietly to me over the phone, when I paused for a breath in my tumbling out words, "I don't even remember the last time I heard you this excited. I love it."

And so this week, I've been researching, too, and dipping my toes in the waters of a new adventure, and it feels so good. I've forgotten, nearly, what passion feels like. I've forgotten, completely, what dreaming feels like.

It last looked like Africa.  It no longer looks like a place, but the shape of my life sculpted and pieced together over long stretches of time and season.

I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm older now, and I don't need this new passion to fulfill me, to define me, to legitimize me. I don't need to prove anything to myself or God or anyone else. I simply see something that I believe deeply in, that I want to be part of, and I'm figuring out how I can jump in and add my one little life to the mix.  

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Joining up with Unforced Rhythms and Heather and Jennifer