New Beginning

I first blogged (I still don't like that word) when i started out losing weight about 18 mos. ago. Unfortunately I can't even recall much about what I wrote or what I was thinking at the time...selective amnesia perhaps.


I'm in a different place, and seemingly a vastly different time now. I've dropped most of the excess weight - save that last 30-40 lbs that hangs on tight. But, I've discovered that I'm opening a new age in my life.

Blame it on Thomas, that blessed man who had his own doubts so painful that he couldn't hold them in, and God save him, that's all most of us remember about him. For reasons I can't explain adequately his story hit me like a ton of bricks recently. I can't explain it, I'm rendered inarticulate. For someone as wordy as me, well that's tough.



Since that day I have prayed continually the call to worship prayer's opening lines - "God Almighty, to you all hearts are open, all desires known and from you no secrets are hid"... Because in fact, I feel just the opposite. I feel closed off, unable to speak what is hidden, the secrets that are deep and wide and set me apart from other people and from the relationship I crave with a God that seems as if He has run the other way. And crave it, I have discovered I do. More so with each breath. And so I pray, and wait. For that seems to be all there is to do right now.



I visit the rivers almost every day. The place where the two great rivers converge. I feel a draw there, though not one I'm able to explain exactly. The silence I find there is soothing, and helps me to see more clearly. The first time i went there I thought I would find something violent and dramatic. Instead what i found was simply water merging with water. But underneath the surface there is a violence that I know instinctively would take my breath away if I was swimming in it he middle of it. Recovering my instincts is part of this as well. Somewhere along the past 15 years I have taught myself to distrust my instincts - and that's never a good idea for a woman who is a survivor.

The other part of my draw to the water is that I hope to lose the fear I have of change at this stage in my life. And slowly my fear is abating. Slowly, flowing out to the sea. Above all I'm beginning to understand that everything will be ok. Change will come at the rate it will come, much like the river, and I can only bend like the river to the will of the Creator. Flowing into whatever lies ahead, trusting that the Plan can contain me. All of my fears, all of my insecurities and pain, but mostly all of my hope.



Perhaps the most startling part of this new beginning is the unearthing that has come with it. My emotions seem so raw and ever-present, just barely being contained beneath the surface. Experiences that I have long since dealt with and moved past or through, are seemingly in my face. Today my car just sort of steered its way to an old place that haunted me as a child. I can't articulate why or how or what I thought would come of this, I only know I didn't feel I had any other choice but to go there.


There is the summary of the beginning of this journey. I have no other choice but to travel the road. I feel compelled to do so, and despite my misgivings, and stumbling, I am acutely aware of the relationship with God and with other believers I so desperately want. And now it is simply a matter of opening my hands, accepting the gifts for what they are, gifts of a loving Father who indeed knows all the secrets I think I have hidden away and yet still desires the loving relationship more than I can ever understand.