Longing is the great devotional song of the soul, it is Divine. It is a prayer that cannot find the words. The emotions are just too big to decipher. The words could never do it justice.
And it is where I am now, I sit with it, this girl in the weeds, trying so desperately to catch up. Overwhelmed and sinking in them, devoured, and not sure how to make it out.
When it came down to it, to love, I always had one foot out the door, and looking over a shoulder. How hard it is to own it. Deep in this moment of reflection and self-responsibiliity.
And so I went to the woods.
The only space safe enough, wild enough, and big enough to allow for big emotions.
I sat with the longing. I couldn’t do anything else, I wanted it, I wanted to feel it. It wasn't even my choice really, it was something much greater, and it was relentless, it wouldn't let me go. I wanted to let it consume me, to indulge it.
But it humbled me.
All along, somehow, in this great sky, under these expansive stars, it was God, and the God within each of us, that kept me looking over a shoulder, with one foot out the door.
And that the words were a gift, and they were given to me, and have always been written on this wall.
The answer is not in the trying, it is in the being.
And you can't get both feet in a door, that isn't yours.
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
I have carried that quote in my wallet since I was 22.
And though I sit with longing tonight, I sit with the success found in common hours, and with you, my love. You are my longing, and with me, somehow, even now, so with me in it. You might just have been the reason it was all put here, within me, to begin with.
So funny, how I realized tonight, how little control I had over anything.
You will get both feet in the door, when it is right and you are ready, and you will stop looking over a shoulder, when what you see before you is so bright, it isn’t even possible. It will happen so naturally, like the trees, the leaves, and the woods.
To all the girls stuck in the weeds, those weeds are holy.
They make you.
Honor them, they have held you back for a reason. They are holding you, completely.
To success unexpected in common hours and going confidentally in the direction of our dreams.
To the longing, it is God telling us that what we know, we KNOW.
We don't long for anything that we don't already know is here, under these stars.
It is a call hOMe, all soul.
I guess I always thought love would be soul-piercing,
turns out, it IS.
Don't ever give up, my sweet girls, in the weeds.
And even if I have only had a glimpse of that light, so bright, I will always have that glimpse.
And I am so grateful to have it.
Even if it is all there is.
It was success unexpected found in common hours.
Happy meditating,
-S