Week 3.34: Beautiful Mess

Wow. 3.34: Beautiful Mess. I smashed this photo through my lens sometime in October somewhere in very southern Colorado after obtaining permission from someone, an artist whose name I don't know, in a guild studio most people would be surprised to find in a dusty, small town. And I wasn't even looking for this amazingness. I was on the hunt for a very specific (other) item...which, by the way, I did not find in that shop or even that town.

Which just proves my point. Sometimes when you think you're in charge and you have a map in your hand and an image in your mind you stumble across the very thing you needed but weren't actually looking for.

Beautiful Mess.

I think that is really the theme I've been running for the whole of my life. And definitely for the last couple of years. Very imperfect. Very jumbled up. And somehow, exactly as I should be.

The very idea of it all has been sneaking up on me steadily, repeatedly and I am struck with the feeling that I'm standing over something very big. A breakthrough is around the corner.

I have something I need to do and for the longest time I didn't even know I needed to do it. I told myself a thousand ways from Sunday that it was old, done past with no need of resurrection. I had worked it out. Moved on. Chosen a new path.

Then something interrupted my trek and I've had to reckon with it. Actually, more accurately, I've been trying to reckon with it. I am in the process of reckoning. Not done yet.

I feel echos that have been chasing me...only now they've all reached such a crescendo that I can't ignore them any longer. 

And the other night as we were drifting off to sleep, my husband "randomly" said, "I want you to write again. I want you to write more. It's something you're supposed to do." And I knew he was right.

Then I sat down to write in my journal where somehow a bunch of pages got eaten up when I wasn't looking and now I'm down to just two slim sheets of beautiful, creamy blank pages. And even though I have several other blank journals at the ready, it's like saying goodbye to a really old, dear friend. I've had this same journal since February of 2005. We've covered a lot of territory together. And I felt overcome with a sense of urgency.

What I write on those last couple of pages is wrapping up one thing and moving on to another. And at the same time I know this process is at the beginning as much as it is at an end, as well as a middle. I find myself nodding to a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "...[in] the whole of world history there is always only one really significant hour - the present...[I]f you want to find eternity you must serve the times." (Bonhoeffer, Eric Metaxas, p. 80-81)

I have to write something even though I don't really "feel" ready. I know I am. Ready. Ready as I'll ever be. It's time to jump. Again. Straight into the Beautiful Mess and Resurrection.