a deep ocean. 6.30.10
A close friend of mine, Jessi, once asked me if I thought God lets us drown sometimes. Let us sink ourselves to the bottom of the deepest ocean and not realize it until we’ve hit the cold, lifeless floor of the sea. And in the moment where we see that there is no point lower than the ground we are lying on, we want nothing more than to return to the source and inhale a breath of restoration. We long for the life we had before we fell so deep and are overwhelmed by the regret from disregard and ungratefulness.
And as we look up to see the faintest, nearly nonexistent light from the world above we once knew, desperation invades every fiber of our being. So we muster up the strength to begin our long journey home. We kick our feet with our tired legs and reach for the surface with our numb arms. We begin to lose our ability to keep the freezing water from penetrating our lungs and panic causes us to swim faster. Hope gushes out of our fatigue bodies as we choke with nothing to relieve the piercing pain. The more we inhale and fight against the water, the more we question why we keep trying.
Our bodies begin to sink slowly, almost floating. We look around and come to terms with the impossibility of anything we do working. We give up. But giving up doesn’t have to mean giving in to the idea of nothing to save us. Perhaps it means a complete surrender in order for something else to work besides us. Something much more powerful and capable and full of mercy and grace. A miracle. A savior.
a cinnamon bun. 3.10.10.
Someone once told me that life is like a cinnamon bun. Contrary to the popular belief that our journeys are linear, such a spiraling effect more accurately depicts the painful cycles that we go through and must endure. Traumatizing experiences during childhood and hurtful memories become a part of us as we grow older, and we have to learn ways to move forward as we begin healing for such painful wounds. This is not to say that we are stuck on creepy-looking immobile horses of a never-ending merry-go-round, but we must strip away each layer of the sweet treat until the very core of us is revealed and there is no more. Many never get to that point, and I know of no one who has actually reached such a utopia.
Twenty-three years later, I wish my issues with abandonment and sense of security I developed as an infant, among many other cinnamon buns, would be completely unraveled—freeing me to move forward without such burden. I wish that after twenty-three years I would have progressed from point A to B, without every so often the issue seeping through my current state of being and suffocating me. But the cycle restarts, over and over again. It is a tiring thing to climb an upward spiral, orbiting slowly toward the center and wishing so badly to just lunge forward into the middle and be done. But each time we go around the circle, we start the next one stronger and with a new perspective because we become nearer to what was originally intended for us, before the thick pastry layers surrounded us, suffocating us with cinnamon sugar and fluff. And once those overbearing pieces are torn away, we are left with the true masterpiece that the one who created us intended.
JUSTFIVELETTERS 
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