Sitting on the couch looking at my Christmas tree all lit up in dark put me in a reflective mood and I thought I would bring you along. It's Christmas eve. A familiar time, often a good time, sometimes quite painful, but this year it's different. This is the first year I am not seeing family on Christmas, the first year I haven't despaired about that, and it's the simplest year I've ever had. It's also a year I am in painful awareness that my life is nothing like I thought it would be. I seem to be nowhere near where I wanted to be in so many ways. Some of you may have heard of the labyrinth, a path that looks like a maze that works its way all over a circle, eventually going to the middle then back out. I feel like I've been on the path trying to find the center. I was pretty close for a while and then it feels like the path just went right back out to the edge and I am standing there wondering if I really am that far away or am I much closer than I think?You think you have some of the answers to the questions you have been asking then you discover that not only are the answers not working, but the questions aren't either. Rilke says to live the question, that the answers could not now be given to me. Why not? I got nothing left. I'm back in that place where I have nothing to loose. Though perhaps I never left that place. I have lost so much over and over again that there is nothing else I can hang onto. But yet there is so much that has been placed in my hands so I keep asking the questions to what feels like a smoky hand, a wispy face I can barely see but not grasp and at this stage, grasping something solid would be nice.
This afternoon I was thinking about this while resting in my blankets and I cried. I am actually not much of a crier but lately, afterward it has felt pretty good , cleansing, like releasing something that has been burning inside, like breaking through something. I thought about it later and I think it's because I'm being honest with myself. I touched on it anyway. And if I can't be honest with myself, I can't be honest with God. I really think I need to go back to my writing. I can make all the excuses I want to about lack of time but what I'm beginning to suspect what it really is, is that I don't want to be honest with myself or God because then I would actually have to look at that stuff. I don't want to go into that black water again, it's easier to ignore it but not forever. Eventually, it floods you and pulls you away from the stump to which you cling anyway. I have been here before. I just didn't want to come back and yet I did want to and that is the ironic thing.
I hope you all have a good Christmas. I know for many of us it's been very cold. Snow and ice has been the name of the game here in the northwest. Many still can't get out and I'm so grateful I now can. I haven't spent this much time at home in a long time or seen this much snow and ice in the valley. In fact, it's still here. I am praying I make it to my friend's house tomorrow safe and sound. It will be the first time I've driven in a week and a half, which reminds me, I need gas. I'm actually really looking forward to tomorrow. I really enjoy spending holidays with these friends and it will be great to see them again. Either I'm in huge denial or I'm actually enjoying a quieter Christmas this year, or should I say, a more extended one. I am getting together with family, just not on the day of. Overall, I'm doing alright. There are just these deeper questions that have been moving inside of me for some time now and I think being cooped up and watching all of these Joan of Arcadia episodes has made me come closer to asking them.
My heater blanket should be in full swing by now. Have a great Christmas and I'll write again soon!