The Wild.
Inhale. Exhale.
It’s a rhythm as old as time, one that we begin practicing in the womb.
A long exhale would be a wonderfully poetic way to paint these past few months, but honestly they have been much closer to a toddler’s tantrum than I’d like to admit.
In our house, tantrums tend to be brought on by discovering boundaries (no we can’t paint the dog or use the vintage glass ornaments as hockey pucks or play the piano with our butt.) And I guess you could say my ‘tantrum’ was sparked by learning my limits as well. The realization that productive grief doesn’t always equal healthy grief has been a hard pill to swallow.
Finding my voice and sharing our story has been a huge part of my healing, but telling about my experience is very different than doing the hard work of truly making space for it.
Denial is great, until it’s not. I didn’t realize how tightly I had been packing the last few years into a little box until eventually the unacknowledged grief started coming out sideways. It may have sounded like “I’m good” but underneath I was rolling in a tumbleweed of anger, fatigue, increased anxiety/panic, restlessness, unexplained pain, and poor eating/moving habits, all amplified even more by the holidays.
I needed to sit face-to-face with our story, completely unfiltered. I needed to acknowledge all of it within my own body for no one other than myself.
Trauma and grief are physical experiences as much as they are spiritual and emotional ones. Ignore any one of those pillars for too long and the imbalance becomes unsustainable.
My tidy little box had burst and my soul and body were hollering “Girl, we need to talk”.
About Norah. About Mom. About August. About secondary infertility.
But those stories contain my deepest wounds and I didn’t want to. No. No. No.
When Lora has a tantrum, we go to her room and I don’t leave unless she asks me to. Her big emotions aren’t too much for me; it’s my job to help her learn how to work through them. As she calms down, she reaches out for me, exhausted from fighting the unknown. We hold hands and take 3 deep breaths, say I love you, and then talk through what happened.
But in those moments, both of us are learning.
When Lora thrashes at the seeming unfairness of the world she is in, my own restless soul is mirrored in her wild little heart.
As I wait, knowing that the boundary she is fighting is for her good, set out of love and protection, I pause in reverence of God’s incomprehensible wisdom and patience.
When she’s exhausted and cries “Mama, hold me,” my heart aches knowing the desire to rest, fully known, in the soothing arms of the one who holds your world.
How desperate must God be for us to just let Him show us how loved we are?
These past few months have been intentionally quiet while I’ve been allowing space for it all. To be honest, I don’t know what’s next, and friends, what a refreshing feeling that is.
Instead of handing God an itinerary for my life, I’m reaching out with open hands and saying “Show me.”
Restoration begins in the wild.
It begins in the messy middle of feeling everything, of tending your wounds, of uncovering the scars.
God embraces your unfiltered soul in all it’s broken glory and breathes life into you.
Don’t discount the wilderness, for within it the rarest beauty blooms.
Inhale. Exhale.
Inhale. Exhale.
Inhale. Exhale.
Begin.
“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” - Genesis 2:7
