shattered.

After 2 hours and 27 minutes of running, the hot water of an Epsom salt bath was exactly what my hips and knees needed. After all that forward motion, after all the hiding from my own mind that often tells me I can't do it, the rest was what I needed. The chance to sit and reflect and remember why I continue to fight to run. Run one more foot, one more mile, one more race. As I washed my face the salt of long ago dried sweat poured into my mouth and I couldn't help but think right back to the masks we wear. This layer of sweat. That layer of make-up. The perfectly curled hair and the perfectly paired outfit. The things that can so easily be mistaken for who I am if I let them.

Who am I? Do we all ask ourselves this question or do some of us just have the pleasure of knowing in full confidence?

I think that I keep coming back to this theme of who I am and the masks I wear over and over again because I am looking at the wrong solution to the problem of who I am. There is no me without a Savior who holds my world in his hands. In order to know who I am, I must first understand who he is. Last night I had to admit to myself, and to others, that I am just mad at God. I cannot see clearly the character of God and therefore, I cannot clearly see the characteristics of myself.

Over the last 5 months my identity has been shattered. And beyond my doing, I have been put back together piece by piece. In the rebuilding, I have lost sight of who I was before. In my case some of the shattering was just the final splintering of deep cracks. Brokenness that could only turn into the beauty in the complete breaking. As I've gathered together the shattered pieces and reconciled them to each other I have gotten stronger and a whole new me has been formed.

Recently it has been clear that the new me no longer fits into the old life. And in this growth and new life, I have become a woman who no longer pretends. The more I identify my masks the more I find myself sickened by them. The mask that tells me I must stay just doesn't fit anymore and will need to be washed off just like the dried sweat yesterday afternoon. Each day I sit in a place where there is a suitcase sitting next to my bedroom door. I tell myself just to make it one more day. The suitcase can sit empty. But it is there. I know what I need. I know what my heart longs for. It is 2,330 miles away, in a little house that I used to call home, with a family that is perhaps more complicated than my situation here but that holds me together and keeps me alive like the beating of my own heart.

Here is what I've learned in this fresh wave of brokenness: I cannot fit into someone else's mold for me. I cannot make my plans based on anything besides what is best for my family. For Porter and I.

This is new life. New life that was grown out of a love that ended. Love never fails, even when it's messy and brutal. Love grew me and stretched me and wrecked me. Even today as my legs are sore and my stomach hurts from yesterday's stretching of my physical capabilities, I know whatever step I take next is going to leave me emotionally sore.

I am here. I am willing to answer the call of whatever that looks like.

I am here. I am willing to listen for the Spirit to prompt me on what my next step of forward motion will look like.

I am here. I am ready to see what the shape of a newly constructed me looks like.

grief.

At a little salon in Olean the hairdresser asked me, hours before my wedding, if I thought I would cry when I read my vows. All my bridesmaids burst out in simultaneous laughter. Me? Cry? That was not something that I did. There are people out there who love their Excel Spreadsheets. The data all stored neatly in the correct column. Each piece of data contained within one small cell. I suppose that I am a lover of putting my emotions in whatever the heart and soul equivalent of an Excel Spreadsheet is. 

As a child I was more than emotional. Some would say a brat, others would probably say clinically insane. There was no controlling the outbursts, the crying fits, or my specialty, kicking the wall in my bedroom until my mother caved. Everyone thought it was a phase, until I was 15 and still through similar sized tantrums. As I grew into my High School years and acted the same not just with family but friends as well, I started noticing the visceral reactions to my entitlement, including the absolute distraction of my friendship with my (almost) lifelong best friend. I learned that emotions were best left inside, choking the life out of me rather than scaring others away from me. So my emotions went into their tidy little columns only for me to see and feel. 

The unraveling of this all began privately, behind closed doors for the most part. I had gotten so used to storing all these emotions away that I forgot how to express emotions in a healthy way. And so at home, shortly after the birth of my son, my emotions took hold of me as a deep depression, and towards my husband as rage-filled rants, nastier but not dissimilar to those of my childhood. The depression tore my own heart apart, as the rage tore my marriage apart. The unraveling became public and in it the admission of all I could no longer control, hide or handle myself. 

I think back to my wedding and that laughter at the idea of me crying, and then I think back to eight hours ago when the idea of not crying was just as laughable. I continue to try to repair the beautiful, awful, broken relationship that is my marriage and with every misstep and rejection I have no other choose but to let the grief and pain overtake me. Sometimes it hits in the middle of meetings, or coffee dates, or the middle of a run. It happens in front of people who have not asked to be in this awkward position but who do not look away until I have said as much or as little as I need. It happens in front of friends who never have the right words because there are no right words, but they sit with me, taking on my heartbreak and loss. It happens in front of my son who always says "Mommy crying. It's okay." and then pulls he a little tighter. 

What I've learned in this season is that my grief, my emotions, my honesty are building community that I never have built and love I never felt in all the hiding. My heart was never meant to read like a spreadsheet--tidy and bland. My heart was meant to offer all of me; the story of a woman scarred, bruised, and sinful but redeemed into a better story. My lips were meant to speak truths so my truth and my story might allow you to tell the story that's choking your heart. My soul was meant to mourn, to grieve, to rejoice, to be joyful, because without the admission of the lowest of lows, my life can also not give gratitude for the highest of highs. 

(This is more of a fresh and personal blog than I typically write. I usually try to allow the emotion to wear off a bit but today I needed to let it out knowing that in the moment, my pain is so personal, but at the end of the long journey of grief, we all have a story, a circumstance, a relationship, that have impacted us in these certain ways. You are not alone, friend. You are seen and known by someone greater.)