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CAMP IDAHO ALERT:
I've sent an email to all interested campers with some info. If you didn't get an email and are considering Camp Scabs. Send me a quick note, I'll fwd it to you.
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You know the kind that are filled with fiery emotion and confusion hopelessness and a loss of the general guidance I feel in my life. Then magnified by the cycle that makes us women. Of course, when this happens the only thing to do is put everyone to bed early, make a heaping plate of nachos, sit in my skivvies in front of the fan and torture myself by watching "The Notebook".
Uggg, why doesn't Mr. Scabs hang perilously from a ferris wheel begging for a date and other stuff?
I've made progress, I used to torture myself by staying up past midnight to watch "Cheaters" while spewing out a slew of swear words, spitting and emailing Elsie. She'd validate me, calm me down and send me off to bed.
I've had other moments where the only thing to do was to pull on my shorts and lace my running shoes and race out the door with Bon Jovi as my side kick. I ran and ran and ran until I came to a clump of trees and then I kept running trying to breathe in the humid warmth of the summer leaves. Then the road swerved around a corner and then another, so I raced around those corners. Spent and out of breath I reached a small river and a rusty old bridge. Slowing to a jog, I crossed over the river and sat on the side rail of the bridge.
Pastures and cows to my left, trees to my right. A truck drove by shaking the bridge as it crossed. I just sat there. I sat there and stared at the river and the blue summer sky and the glow of light through the trees and the cows and the plastic grocery sack stuck in the muck and willows at the edge of the river: I stared at all this while Bon Jovi strummed in my ear. Then I heard it like I'd never heard it before, "You give love a bad name!". In an instant tears jerked from my eyes and my hoarse voice screamed into the wind,
"Shot through the heart and your to blame, you give love a bad name!
BAD NAME!!"
BAD NAME!!"
But, we all know I wasn't hollering at the wind, I was shouting at Mr. Scabs. I was grieving.
When I told Mr. Scabs that I had shouted about love and bad names at the wind, we laughed a bit and felt sad a bit and looked into each others teary eyes as we kind of smiled and frowned at the same time, then we shrugged as if there's nothing else to do but move forward, linked pinky fingers and took our kids to the zoo.
These little moments of emotion have become so valuable to me. It's a release of the deep darkness that was once the norm in my life. I've discovered a healthy way to explore these feelings and come to know them. Knowing the dark is the only way to feel the fuller light and cleanliness that is divinely ours. Because He who made us, made opposition in all things.
Understanding my dark lends way to more brilliance in my light.
