A sigh

What do you say when no one asks? How can you describe colors that are so overwhelmingly intense they fit no gradient? What if rain specifically comes to the hearts that are hard, dry, broken and cracked, and just when we think we are drowning, we realize that our shattered edges are coming together?

It is so easy to speak of trust and acceptance when it is not your heart on the line, when the glass from the mirror  is not your life, and when the bruises were not caused by the ones you love. Yet we are constantly learning, using our experiences to help touch someone else, letting our pain become their reminder that they are never alone. Then how does melancholy slip in like an unwelcome guest, declaring itself as loneliness, evident in memories, and remembered in lost texts, pictures, and empty rooms? Why does my soul sigh like a weeping willow, it's branches reaching toward the earth, brushing away the dirt, revealing vulnerability that is still covered in so much confidence that no one detects it.

Reaching for a hope I do not see, walking by faith and not by sight; maybe this is not about tomorrow, or the day after that, but today. The battle between forgetting and holding on, not daring to let go for fear of it coming back to life, but yet wanting this bittersweet pain to move on, to let it be, to let me be. Maybe I will never understand the way you could make me feel so alive, maybe I will never understand the intricacies, the way my feet were lighter when we danced, and maybe the gaping hole that questions bring, will one day be filled with the assurance that even if I will never understand, Jesus always did. Maybe one day, I will stop looking for you in the crowd, stop thinking of things I still want to tell you, but the stubborn part of my heart never wants to.

Timing, place, destiny, me, whatever it was that stood in our way, will maybe one day make sense, but this battlefield that my heart has been turned into cannot stop fighting, its endless shouts echoing whenever I close my eyes. But what do you say when no one asks? When tears are in your eyes, but a smile rests on your lips like a paradox, a lie, but yet so true? When does strength mean staying and dealing with the memories, the loss of you, instead of running away like every ounce of my being wants to? I do not pretend to understand this, because I do not. The way ashes make it hard to breathe and smoke sticks in our lungs, but fire brings new life. How you can give and give and give until your throat burns and you cannot speak any longer, but that moment when everything collapses is the exact moment everything becomes silent, spinning out of control... quiet. Like a ripple in the water, or a scintilla of truth that bursts to life, their questions have the potential of bringing on a storm, a crash that this land does not know how to control, and maybe that is why I am so afraid to speak. How do you talk about something that you are not even sure ever happened, like a dream that was so vivid, you wake up and cannot remember if it was real life or just an illusion, like the surreal feeling of deja vu.

Yes, I miss you. And there are so many words still swimming in my mind, like gray, the color, the feeling, the resting place that can swallow you whole, but also dauntless, the feeling of courage, and ghosts; the ones that were and the ones that are, memories that are only mental images. And there are so many things I do not understand, about you, about me, about us, about friends and why sometimes things need to fall apart to fall back together, why broken things become the strong ones, but one thing I do know, one thing that has never left, even in the moments when I did not feel it, is that God is always near. Breathing my name, holding me close, lifting my head, bringing me back when it got dark, rejoicing over my existence, lighting the way, before, behind, around me. Always.

Maybe I cannot see the home lights anymore, maybe I am a bit lost, maybe you knocked me down, or maybe I did it to myself, either way, one day I am going to pick myself up, and the dust beneath my feet will serve as a reminder of a lesson, a season of growth, a stepping stone, a story. And letting veracity become a part of me is something that I am striving toward, and being open, having life flow through me like a river, strong and yet moveable; lionhearted. Being okay with it if the words get tangled, (like this piece) and realizing that I am not going to understand, and that I will wish I could. Like how I wish I knew how to go back with the things I know now, that it would end. Are we really finished? I wish I knew. And that is what I am learning. I am not giving up; this is just growth, even if I cannot see it yet, and that is okay because one day I will.

xx. Amy Jane

P.S. I like to think that a sigh can mean many things; like a sigh of contentment, or a sigh of frustration, a sigh of weariness, and a sigh of knowing that you are safe. Maybe this post is about all of those. 

*picture taken in Germany