Every night I pray for my boys and ask that they may have beauty for their eyes. Yet, I had found myself losing the meaning of those words. They became merely well intending words. The last several days have reminded me what beauty rest actually is and the absolute power of beauty. Upon walking up to the edge of a cliff off of Route 101 in Oregon I found myself in a silent dance with the Divine. It offered it's hand to me and asked my soul onto the dance floor. I watched the silence and the spirit in me being twirled and dipped and carried away with the waves as I watched them crash against the shoreline. It was if my body was in a trance. It's the same feeling I have when I watch my boys with a stupid grin and immeasurable pride as they take the risks involved in their big little life. Like the first time he let go of my hand and said, "Mommy, I'd like to go ask those kids to play with me." It's so simple but it's everything. My heart broke because he had grown beyond me but it leaped and grew to ten times the size because he's now his own. After the moments that felt like days, my spirit bowed in gratitude at the chance to dance with the divine and join my body once again. It was as though I had never taken a deep breath until now. It now felt like someone had tied balloons to my feet and I was a lifetime of sorrow less. It had been so long since I had experienced the kind of beauty that says to your spirit, "It's ok. You can rest here." The very kind I have prayed for my children all these years. I was renewed and baptized in the beauty given to us if only we allow ourself the chance.
To my husband I say thank you. May I love you deeper and better. May I give you love from the top of the barrel where it is rich and flavorful. Thank you for seeing me and giving me the chance to become new again. I pray the same chances for you.
To my trip companion, Amy, I am immensely grateful for the worlds of silence, deep conversations and experiences that we allowed to flow between us. Yours is a friendship that has never left me to the lions. You've been a hand to pull me out of the den. I am certain that if unable to pull me out, you would climb in with me, lock arms and stare down the lions together. You're my soul sister. Soul sister. Go on, get that gold, sister.
To my children; my boys, my heart, I cannot wait to smell your heads and kiss your tiny little candy lips. You are my life's song. Thank you for understanding that I'm a better composer when I am full of fresh notes and melodies that only experience and beauty can afford me. May we never lose the music and dance together every chance we get. Don't forget that sometimes the beauty you need is waiting for you in your breath, behind your eyelids, inside yourself. Write your own songs. May all the nexts be more beautiful than the lasts.
For the rest of you, I say do whatever it takes to find your song. There are times in life when we must give voice to the silence inside us. To allow the space between our thoughts a chance at the dance floor. Give it the microphone and listen to it with clumsy purpose. The silence inside you will sing you a song like a siren sings to the ships at sea. You catch a note of the melody and you're drawn in to the chorus with a longing to feel it move you, flow through you, become you. There is an artist inside all of us. We long for a chance to make something beautiful from the life we have. So do it. Life is but a breath.
This one took me 6 years, may the next not be so far away.
"We travel not to escape life, but that life not escape us."
