Moonlight Dancer - My Messy Beautiful

I help lead a care group at my church on Tuesday mornings.  It's a privilege of epic proportions because the gift being given is women's stories; they bare their hearts and part of their very souls. 

The group is heavy, in the best of ways, filled with many soul-cleansing tears and shared looks of understanding, empathy, and grace.  It's a beautiful place of connection and I look forward to our meetings each week. 

This morning one woman was quiet.  The other leader pulled her aside afterwards to ask her if she was ok. Her heart and pain began spilling out as she shared her anger in not comprehending how any of us in the group could talk about joy and pain in the same breath. She hadn't yet seen that happen in her young life and was angry and believed somehow we must be misleading her.  When the leader shared this with me after the room had emptied, I wept.  I wanted to chase that beautiful woman down and hold her by her shoulders to look deeply into her eyes and let her see, truly see the pain that still hovers in my day to day life.  It’s true, my outlook on life is one of contentment, and peace; but pain and frustration and fear and disappointment haven't been washed away completely; instead those things have just become smaller in the heavy dense light of the healing grace I'm experiencing.  

You don't get to the joy, and you can’t get to the peace if you haven't weathered the storm. Before life’s storms knock you around and bang you up, it is easy to miss much of the beauty and blessing that wash around you daily. When you have been bruised and wounded and ripped wide open from life's places of dirt and grief, and you allow the healing power of grief to wash your eyes anew; you are freed up to begin to really see where you are standing.  When you learn that your life is better than any novel, more beautiful and dramatic than any box office success, and more full than a ridiculous soap opera, you are freed up to begin to interact with your life with different intentions.  When you know you can swim in deep waters, you learn to love the ocean.  When you know that pounding rain brings new growth, and fire can burn off chaff that blocks you from deeper connection, truer love and more powerful compassion, then you no longer run from the storm or flame.  That is how you can speak of both joy and pain in the same breath and be authentic.  That is where true interaction with others comes.  That is the sweet spot.  It is hard to live in the sweet spot, holding hope as a bird perched on a branch, because when you are there you are vulnerable.  Your heart can be wounded and pulled and bloodied and used.  But you also learn to see people. See them with eyes of love and grace.  See them with compassion and empathy.  When you walk through dark forests you can truly learn to love yourself and when you love yourself you are free to give your best self to the rest of us.  And your healing spills out like a warm balm that covers those around you with its powerful comfort. 

The simple truth is that we are all the same; yet in our sameness lies incredible difference- meaning: I am a single mother with special needs kids, and I am now divorced.  None of those facts about me are unique, or new, or rare.  There are millions of single mothers with special needs kids who have been through a divorce.  But just giving you the details of my story wouldn't be enough.... you might not be able to connect to me with just the details of my story- however when I  expose those shattered places where i feel like a failure, and am angry, and am grieving the loss of my lifelong dream, you can begin to relate; because those feelings can apply in places of your story.  In the realization that we are all the same we are set free to live our different lives and give the world what we were designed to give it.  

You don't need to know the details of my story to understand me.  The connection isn't in the details anyhow.  Where you will feel connected to me is in the feelings. The emotions and the pain I've experienced. You'll feel connected to me there because you have felt many of the same feelings in your journey.  Brene Brown warns that people need to earn the right to hear your story.  As I've navigated a long bumpy road through the death of my marriage over the last year and a half, I have found this to be true. While I don't consider my story a secret, I am careful with whom I lay the details.  There is power to be found in the details, but, as I've also learned and stated before, the connection isn't usually in those details.  Grief and hurt are universal struggles.  You can hear my grief without ever knowing the backstory.  

So much of the joy and the healing and the good and beautiful comes with connection.  As I was jolted into a new reality the day I asked my husband to leave, I was a shattered shell of a woman.  My tribe circled round and pulled in tight to protect me, feed me, love me and make space for my hurt.  In that crisis mode, there was grace and hushed voices and random gifts in the mail and lots of acknowledgement in my pain.  It was part of the life blood that kept me on my feet and allowed me to survive and keep my children well.  As the immediate crisis stretched into a new reality and became my day to day, many people fell away and the tribe got smaller and tighter.  But here's the catch, here is a secret not shared by many;  there are parts of your healing that will have to be done all alone.  Sometimes you have to get alone with yourself and some good music as company.  Don't be afraid of this chapter.  Don't run to your places of escape, rather allow your heart to be safe with you.  Receive your own truth and pain with gentle hands and a tender heart.  Give yourself the gift of grace and love and space that you would give your dearest friend.  Treat your heart with the dignity it deserves and know that in those lonely places you and God can begin to forge a kinship that can't be found in the noise of other relationships.  Allow Him to tell you who you are and be careful not to identify yourself by the circumstance you are in. I have failed, but I am not a failure.  I have handled things wrongly, but I am not a mistake.  I have been wounded but I am not a victim.  

No matter how dark the night, somehow, in some miraculous mystery, the sun always rises. And while my night sometimes seems to stretch out for eternity, I have learned to dance in the moonlight (with a little Gypsy Kings on for company).

http://momastery.com/carry-on-warrior/