To bravely sit in silence, to write, to be content with doing one thing and not the millions of things the world beckons you to do. To pray. To unfetteringly feel. To breathe in, and reflect, and breathe out. To do it all over again. To feel joyful afterwards. To do what I have been avoiding for a while.
My heart has donned a cynical coat as of late. It doesn’t fit quite right. It’s not really my style, its shoulders are much too boxy, the sleeves are too big, there are some buttons coming loose and quite frankly, I don’t like anything about it. But it has kept me warm.
Maybe, I ought to do something about the weather, instead of throw on layers that grate against the very fabric of my soul.
But how, God? Aren’t You in charge of the climate that my heart finds itself in? Aren’t You the one who tells me to not worry about tomorrow? For tomorrow will worry about itself (I seem to help tomorrow out quite a bit) and each day has enough trouble of its own (enough for today and the rest of the year, don’t You think?). I’ve been waking up in blizzards without hand warmers, tornadoes without a basement, floods without a lifeboat. What do I do, God, when you don’t seem to be allowing the rain to let up and I’ve employed a meteorologist named Optimism who keeps giving me false forecasts?
What do I do when that wretched coat feels like it’s the only thing within reach?
Perhaps I don’t need to throw it away. Maybe I ought to find a tailor. A good one, the sweet seamstress across town, full of wisdom and well-versed in spinning life into cynical threads.
I brave the storms outside, clutching the coat, and I open the tiny shop door as a bell chimes, alerting that a customer has come in. How normal. How could transforming cynicism feel this mundane? I hesitate, gazing at the mirror of the alteration shop. It’s an awful coat. I am ashamed that I have kept it for so long. I am fearful of what will happen to it — for all that it is, it’s familiar, it’s reliable. I want to run out of the shop but my feet remain planted; a brave two minutes that give me the courage to hand it over.
I part with the coat, knowing when I receive it back, it will look different. It will feel different. It will be woven with hand-spun, heavyweight, sustainably-sourced Hope, secure, full of life. It will move with me, it will not dictate my movement.
I take an ever-so-slightly deeper breath. The sun is still there, brightening the clouds like tracing paper over a light box. The hurricane that seems to cling to my coordinates has a rhythm that begins to sound a little more beautiful and a little less chaotic.
I wait on my new coat. A different coat, for the same storm, in a different season.
peace by peace 