heavy

The days in year 25 have been fast, mostly. Filled to the brim, peppered with early mornings and lingering evenings, a little blurry if I try to think about them all at once. At the same time, there certainly have been moments of slowness. Many weeks were spent waiting for a variety of things, ranging in a great deal of significance: an apartment to rent, a cup of tea to brew, a package to arrive, a shower to get hot, a golden hour to descend, a steadfast prayer to be answered.

I’ll be honest — I’m walking into 26 with a heavy heart that’s split in two directions. One part, heavy in a dictionary-definition kind of way: fraught with a lead-like weariness that the past 365 days have heaped into my life. The other part, heavy in a much different fashion: a sweet, rich, honey-heavy retrospection that is tender and full. A gratitude so heavy that it leaves a few dents wherever I place it.

Heavy. Both the good and the bad have been intense this year. My breath has caught in my chest with great helplessness in the hallway of an ICU and great elation at a pool-side baptism. I’ve knelt to pray in deep desperation over my marriage and deep joy over the same marriage. My heart has pounded with anxiety during hard, blindsiding conversations and with vigor after completing workouts I didn’t think I’d be capable of.

Both the good and the bad have pulled my gaze towards the spiritual, the sacred, the God Who holds it all. Through the intensity, in the never-a-dull-moment unfurling of these days, I cannot help but long for something more than this little life on earth. It’s either been so hard that my heart needs something better to cling to, or so good that my heart needs to know that good things can last, somewhere.

It’s probably clear by now (lol) that emotions sit deeply with me. At my core, underneath corporate-girly or silly-babysitter or polished-daughter or whatever other emotional outfits I wear throughout the day, I am a wistful romantic trying to find a place to breathe where the air isn’t quite so noisy. Walking through life with a fistful of thoughtful seeds, looking for a beautiful and untroubled place to plant them.

25 was heavy, and I expect 26 will be too. In all the hard and good ways. Here’s to the fullness of emotion and the fullness of life and the way everlasting that exists well beyond the years I have here.

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

1 Corinthians 15:51-52