be still my bleeding heart
My life has been a road of many twists and turns. The paths I’ve traipsed over the past few years have led me to face some of the most arduous challenges of my life. I’ve made hasty, monumental decisions. I’ve put myself into difficult situations. Backed myself into corners. Wasted time, wasted money, wasted emotions, wasted life itself. I could say, “Hello, my name is Regret.” But I won’t. No, because I’ve been thinking about the wasted time, the wasted money, the wasted emotions.
I’ve been thinking about the ripples. All the ways that lives have changed because of the roads I’ve traversed. Good things come! Good things happen! It’s absolutely concrete. While I could say that I wish I never wasted so much of my life chasing a mythical love, and I might wish I’d never said those two fateful words (“I do”), I have two vibrant and beautiful testaments to the perfection of that journey right before me. Every day I am blessed by the wonder of these two human beings entrusted to my care. And they would not be, had I not walked down that particular path. And since then, for all the painful twists and turns that follow divorce, I can see how other people’s lives have changed for the better, all because our lives intersected at some point along that path. This isn’t to say that I take credit for anything; it’s only to say that providence allowed me to be in a particular place at a particular moment in which I could (and did) do something that would (and did) help another.
It’s real. It’s tangible. I can name names.
A child in Bali. A village in Cambodia. A single mother with two young children. A battered wife. A young mother with four children. A woman. A family. A man (or two, or three, or seven, not that anyone’s counting). If I even start to dwell on why or how I am here , in this country house so far from the madding crowd, I can turn my thoughts to any one of these people and quiet my anxious heart. I don’t care how much money is gone. I don’t care how many days, months, years have passed. I don’t care how many tears I’ve cried. Lives have changed! Even one of these would be well worth any of the suffering I’ve put myself through. I won’t dwell on the pain. I won’t entertain regret.
True, I’ve been losing myself all along the way, bit by bit, so that I don’t even recognize myself any more. I do wish I’d been vigilant from the start and given my self greater care. I’m recognizing this now, and slowly but surely I am taking steps to restore myself to my self. I’m going through the fire. The refiner’s fire. I’m going to be shiny and bright, when I get back to me.
Hello, my name is Hope.
I’m glad for this journey.
