A little over ten years ago, as I sat with my young son in his bed while sleep fought to overcome him, overwhelmed and emotionally depleted, on the verge of a marital collapse as my then-husband slid into the dark abyss of an addiction he could no longer resist, this song came on.  The words poured out from the speaker, catalyst for the tears slipping quietly down my cheeks, as I questioned my strength to handle all that would come, not knowing that I was just at the very beginning of a landslide that would threaten to smother me many times over in the coming years. 

That song came on again tonight as I shuffled through an old playlist – the one I reserve for times of deep distress – and the words again settled in my heart in a painful melancholy.  This time, though, I heard it through the ears of a woman ripe in the beginnings of the last season of her life, children no longer at home waiting for her arrival, or to help them settle into sleep; watching her life be blown by the winds of another’s fate, uprooted and not knowing when it would finally be safe for her to spread her roots and grow into her soul’s purpose, finally.

I watch her struggle to gather her legs beneath her even as the weight of another failing relationship tries to push her back down, and she’s not sure that her knees are quite stable enough not to buckle anymore.  But I know that they are, even when she does not; that they will hold her for as long as she keeps standing up.  I know that she will gather herself and remember all of the lessons these intervening years have taught her and she will rise up and embrace her pain and gather it to her bosom like a beloved child, and she will find the grace hidden there as she always finds the grace in everything, because there is always grace to be found if you still your heart and mind long enough to let it come to you. 

I see this beautiful woman as she unfolds into her own Becoming, struggling to let go of years of dreams overnight, to allow them to make way for what her life is going to become whether she is ready or not; struggling with the terror of having to build her life all over again so late in the season, leaving her breathless; struggling with the pain of losing what she thought was the rest of her forever; learning to simply sit with the pain and honor it as it bleeds slowly from her heart, not trying to staunch it, or stitch it, but just letting it flow as it needs to, knowing that God is holding the pieces safely until she is ready to put them back together and healing can come.

How many more times will I sit here, both literally and figuratively?  I survey what my life has been condensed down to – a suitcase and some random bags with the necessities crammed haphazardly together – sitting in a strange home that I’ve known before in other time when I found myself turned out, knowing that the world as I knew it was ending then, as it has now done again, and I wonder how my heart can make it through this storm of pain somewhat intact.

As I drove last night, trying to leave the pain behind for a while, deer came out to me at every turn and a calm peace settled over me as it always does when the Universe responds to my pain, assuring me that all will be well eventually.  The deer came and I stopped counting past 20, each a sign that God holds my heart when it feels like it will shatter completely.  And as the fog settled close around me I knew it was time to birth that woman inside of me, finally; that woman, so filled with the love and grace that only suffering can hone and make sweeter, if it doesn’t take one down entirely.  It is time to rise into myself and love this woman fully, in all the ways I give to those I love; for no one, ultimately, is responsible for that but me.  Because if I know how to do nothing else, I do know how to love well.

I do not know where my story may go, or where the winds of time will blow me.  I only know that the words of this song keep coming to me from every direction – a reminder that I am not the first woman to find herself in this place, nor will I be the last.  I only know that it is time to stop fighting this process, let go and let the riptide carry me to wherever I’m supposed to land.  It is time for me to Become.