THE UNBURDENING
It started before it started.
Sometimes your body is trying to tell you something even before your mind has time to catch up. Things begin to slip from your lips…like, “God please just do something. Shift my life. Go ahead.” My exact words, walking from Studio to Wash House.
Did I will this unburdening, call it to me by the things that I felt and said? Or were the things that I was feeling and saying preparation for what God already had planned?
I thought I had dodged it all [coming home from extensive surgery, sitting down for the first real meal in days] and the phone call came. Three days later I was back in surgery. Seven weeks later we were shaving my head.
There is rarely a time-marker for the moments in our lives that feel bigger than what we think we can handle. Life overwhelms us with its devastations and triumphs.
We push. We strive. We angst. Somewhere along the way we fail to live up to our own expectations. But life has an agenda that is nearly always more breathtaking than we can imagine for ourselves.
Some who read my story may have this impression that things [important, essential, worked-hard-for things] are being stripped away. They may imagine fingers grasping for darkness in the middle of the night. I am anything but empty-handed.
Life’s gifts are something borrowed. Like cups of sugar. Freely given. Baked in. (continued...)
Some things, some remarkable, life-changing ingredients of our lives are misunderstood as EVERYTHING—careers, relationships, dogs, bodies— we make them the center of our lives.
What is YOUR everything? Is it how you see yourself or your imagining of the impression others have of you? Is it your gifting that elevates your status in certain circles or the relentless schedule you are keeping that gives the illusion that time isn’t running out?
This feeling of importance, of being needed, of being heard, understood and seen. This terror that we’ve missed it, that we’ve lost it, that someone else has what is rightfully ours. What, my precious friend, is burdening you?
One strand and then another falls to the floor. Those who say “she is obsessed with her hair,” have missed the point entirely. Here is the point, entirely—
“He counts the hairs on your head, so do not be afraid.”
This is the hard stop. This is where it begins and ends.
Too many hairs. Too many blessings.
Too many to count.
From the outside looking in, life may feel like a disaster. But from the inside, cells are exploding and multiplying at the speed of light. And somewhere, in the sweet, juicy center of everything, the unburdening is having its way.
