go be new.

It has been a particularly challenging week, pain has been climbing on an upward trajectory and by the end of the day I’ve found myself in bed, curled up in a ball, gripping a pillow - white knuckled, with silent tears streaming down my face. Pain always makes emotions stronger and more pronounced, they’re harder to fight when you have no physical capacity to fend them off. Interesting that body and mind go hand in hand. When pain hits the highest points, my heart seems to explode as well. I try to remember in these spaces that while feelings are real, they are not reality. While loneliness feels palpable right now, soon I will be able to breathe again and I will find myself laughing with the people I hold dear, people who love me deeply even though they’re in a different season and cannot always create space, or see, or hear me. And perhaps - I am more silent than I care to admit. I shut them out and choose not to share because there is a risk of rejection. I know their capacities are limited and it is easier to give them space than to ask them to show up and then be met by their silence. I wish I could say my feelings don’t get hurt…or that I’m really good at all this - I feel like I should be by now, but I’m not. Maybe we never are. Maybe in THIS world, the fallen and broken world, we just have to give ourselves grace and remember the God who created us was aware of our shortcomings far before we met them face to face. He chose to die for our failures and we don’t have to live under the weight of them anymore. Perhaps we have to step into the light and let it just be ok even though it doesn’t always feel that way.  As my friend Ty would say…keep walking…take another step…go be new.