flooded moats.

i recently found the journal that i filled during what could only be remembered as the most refining, painful year of my life. during that year i lived by the Hemingway quote that says to “write hard and clear about what hurts". there is a beauty in looking back at the reality of where i was, in the brilliant light of where i am.
how sweet it is that all of my pain was true and real and mine, but it wasn’t forever, and that is just as true and real and mine.
so if this finds you in a season of desolation and destruction, know that it’s hard and hurts and it is all so very real, but it is also temporary.
rest in the tension.
i am so, so thankful that i did.

excerpt from my journal - 12/28/2013
“it’s like i’ve built myself into a sandcastle.
one that has finally been met by the tide.
i suppose it was always going to catch up with me.
i shouldn’t be surprised that it did.
and yet, it it was the castle i built.
i created it and i let myself believe it would stand forever.
but in a single moment it has been washed away.
gone forever.
and as the tide has repeatedly crashed into my shore and retreated to it’s own boundless depths, it has ripped from me more than what i had built to begin with.
leaving behind caverns and hollows.
but like a child, i tried to fight the powerful tide.
i’ve built walls and moats around myself to guard my kingdom from the unbridled, vicious sea.
but my moats have flooded and my walls crumble into nothing as the waves reach out and grab my towers and spires, my corridors and dungeons, until every locked door has been washed away and every secret passage obliterated.

and as the tide recedes i am left in it’s wake.
worn by my losing battle.
bruised and beaten by the rubble of my own crumbled kingdom.
stripped by the sand and stung by salt that has clung to my wounds.
my eyes release that same salty salvation, forcing me to succumb to a reluctant surrender.
and there, beneath the moon and all the stars, with the waves before me and the rubble behind, i know that
i will never be the same.
the sea will never return to me that which it has stripped away.
certainly my wounds will heal in time.
my eyes will dry.
my fists will open and drop the final vestiges of my fallen fortress.
the sea will level my grounds.
and there, in my newfound desolation, i will accept the vast unknown.
i will give in to the power of the sea.
my salt stung scars reminding me forever of what’s behind and all that lies ahead. “