Blindly.

I can’t be sure if it’s the glowing orb of a moon hanging in the sky like a bowl of gold, Barcelona radio playing in the background, skimming through my amazing nephew’s recent travel photos (Luke Mattson), or being surrounded by moving boxes again that has me feeling overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with gratitude, overwhelmed with wonder, overwhelmed with questions, overwhelmed with histrionics, overwhelmed with my surprising ability to be so surprisingly present in the simple moment of now.

This has been a season of transition and continues to be so, but for once in a very long time I feel almost completely at peace with what today was. Of course it wasn’t what I would consider “ideal”. But what is “ideal”? Is it getting everything I want? Is it having everything I want? Is it dancing through my several waking hours without feeling pain, without feeling sadness or fear or disappointment? If that’s the ideal: then to hell with it. I recently went through a tumultuous chapter that felt devastating and then in some of those quiet and sometimes not so quiet wail filled moments of loneliness, fear, and hopelessness something changed.

I plunged headfirst back into my faith, blindly and wildly, and I am completely absorbed in it. Love, or at least a bit more acceptance, flows more freely, and while I still have my moments of inner ugliness that rear up that I will always battle, I face them head on with understanding that I am human, that grace is extended to me more than I know every single day from so many people.

During a brief yet powerful conversation (although only profoundly significant to me) I had on the telephone at work this evening with an elderly gentleman, I realized how absolutely precious each day is. He shared that lost his wife three days ago. I could sense, almost feel, the pain in his voice. The frailty in it wasn’t from age; it was from grief. Knowing that grief to some extent myself, it reminded me of how beautifully blessed I am to be in this state, both physically and mentally, that I am now.

I am exhausted in so many ways, but in that tiredness I tumble into a half-asleep recognition that complete control is out reach. Playing back visions of times where I clung so strongly to an idea, an idol, an image and how easily they slipped away permits me to float like a vessel through a crisp, murky sea where the destination isn’t necessarily the end goal, and I can appreciate that.