YEARS

Listen: BON IVER - LOVE MORE

I don't think the soul can grasp time. Not well, at least. Yet I doubt if it was meant to.

Maybe that is why we feel age creep up on us, and we calculate its tide by watching the creases in our skin layer and wash themselves thin and thick over us, or our hair frizz into shades of white and loose its vigor, as too, our bodies. 

I believe our souls are eternal and that these bodies are not, however, I do believe that this soul of mine--our souls--were created for a body. A body that does not age, but grows just as our souls do.

We can feel the innermost, we can feel its growth, like the core of an oak, expanding in an outward dance; slowly, inwardly, penetratingly, words traced and tied like a river in knots. Here is what I mean, exactly: YEARS.

Last July, I was the same person in appearance, still blue eyed and 5'2", with long, unruly hair eager to be chopped. Although looking deeper, I remember a heart like an ocean gale, blowing and tossing, singing and weeping, perhaps the anchor coming undone, yet so passionate and longing. Longing to love, to give, to be like Ruth, the Ruth who said in Moab's fields, 'Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.'

Much has swept over me, all these people; their beautiful hands that have touched me and I them... and in a corner, her remains; the plague like death to desire and feeling, all forced to ash. This penetrating change that left me tangled into myself, fighting anxiety, depression, and fear of drowning in an abyss of back-washed emotions. 

I never imagined this could grow to feel so heavy in my arms and on my chest. 

There--here: this pile of vomit, who could guess that she once had sprouted wings and left home of her chrysalis, full of wanderlust and vibrancy. See this dirty rag that led and leads to this brokenness, this ongoing surrender? This rag tied in knots and filled with holes that pulled and tugged me closer to my merciful, faithful Redeemer, to His heart that is not heavy on my chest. I look into His eyes and love how wild they are, how good they are.

I feel as if that ocean gale of last July blew me to a painted desert exploding with intoxicating mirages, but after the illusion died in the tundra of a long winter, there I was, discarded like an old dream, and inside, I was dried mud, parched and crumbling, like shattered pottery. 

Now it is July again. July, the month I was born, and I can feel the hope rising, when not so long ago, but so far since, there was very little. I am less now than I was, but He is ever more than He was before and that is something to be thankful of.

Maybe this is what years look like.