Graveyard Into A Garden

I woke up this morning and almost immediately began crying.

At first I thought I was crying from pain because I’m having a migraine and it was causing visual disturbances and making it hard for me to balance. Then I thought I was crying for other reasons like feeling alone or fear of the future but none of that fit. So I sat on my bed and asked myself and God why I was crying.

We all keep some things to ourselves…emotional and whatnot….it’s not that… Okay Hilary…we are intrigued. Then I ask if I’m thankful and this wave of emotion comes from my chest, heaving up and out, and tears one after another creating a flood.

I like to have privacy when I write and disconnect from the distractions of life, so I plug my earbuds in and Beautiful Things by Gungor comes on. They sing about how God makes beautiful things out of dust, out of us. How he creates life out of seemingly dead and broken things.

I’m sure this all seems coincidental to you, my reader. But what you have to understand dear reader, is that when I write God whispers into my ear and says things and I find some wonderings beside some of mine that are Him speaking to me. I don’t hear an audible voice, but I feel peaceful when I write. In the midst of physical, spiritual, emotional, and existential pain He finds me trying to make sense of it and gives me peace in the exploration of it, of myself, and of His relation to all of it.

I didn’t ask Him to take away my migraine, but I asked for peace. I can’t feel the pain, but I feel the nausea and lightheadedness. I’ll take it. If I can write and listen to what He has to say and muse alongside Him, I’m excitedly waiting.

I think part of my thankfulness is knowing that I have a community. For the most part it isn’t where I’m living. It’s spread far and wide. But I kinda love that. There’s something comforting about the lives that used to be intertwined with mine are now intertwined with others. If I’ve had the impact they’ve had on me, then they carry a little bit of me with them where they go and with whom they meet. We all have a bit of the people we love stitched into the lining of our hearts.

Strength doesn’t come out of nowhere. We aren’t born strong. We are born fragile. We become strong by overcoming our fragility, by experiencing pain, by believing in ourselves when the world says not to, by working through our pain and coming out on the other side, by surviving the trial by fire of living a life marked by freedom and courage and compassion, and by being recreated and refined after the fact by the weather beaten hands of God.

God creates opportunities within our lives to see Him more clearly. A lot of times those opportunities can look like setbacks, can feel like nails being pounded into our flesh, and can show us deep grace and love.

I’m like a glass vase sitting on the highest shelf, only I’ve fallen and burst into a billion pieces. I try to glue myself back together and end up cutting and recutting my fingers on the edges. He takes all my pieces and He uses a Japanese art, "Kintsukuroi", of using lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver, and platinum to repair broken pottery.

In the rebuilding of me, my brokenness still spread out on the kitchen table, He simultaneously lays with my broken spirit, shines within me, screams beside me when I need to scream and cry, and he takes all the pieces of my soul/heart and secures me with a purity that is not my own, making me a more beautiful me that is more like Him.

He takes our dust and makes us beautiful.

It’s strange how God kinda laces my thoughts with His. I feel like my thought process is a plain cloth and His thoughts and ways are an intricate lace.

This is sacred to me because it’s my heart laid out here for all to see and laying it out helps me to see it and myself more clearly in relation to what I can see Him doing in my life.

Something I pretty much swore I’d never do again, I’m starting this fall; School.

I’m going back to get an A.S. in Graphic Design. I’m excited. I was also very scared. I was never a school person.

I’m not scared anymore.

I never know what God is doing in my life,

but it has always worked to my good.

In the moment it feels like the opposite of my good, but being where I am, surviving what I have, coming out on the other side to see the intricate veins of silver, gold, and platinum laid within my deepest wounds binding me back together.

Peace is a lot the feeling of falling, in that the feeling of falling in the first few seconds is an extreme exhilaration. You feel like anything is possible, maybe you’ll fly and you won’t fall, maybe after you’ve fallen you’ll still be able to access that exhilaration afterwards, and maybe you’ll feel this confidence that impossible things aren’t nearly as impossible as we once thought.

“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible’!” - Audrey Hepburn

^^ Who doesn’t love an Audrey Hepburn quote?

Like me, you may feel like you’re broken into a billion pieces and you’re heart has exploded and you can’t seem to find the pieces. God is with you, with His gold, silver, and platinum lacquer, loving and guiding you. And if you don’t know God, are curious about Him, or even if you think everything I’ve just written is a pile of poo, I’m here to talk about anything that I’ve written if you want or need to talk or ask questions.

Low key, He’s kinda amazing and He does amazing things with dust.

Sincerely Yours,

The Undefeated