Still Alive

My feet revel in their vulnerability. For the first time in months, they are free from the clausterphobic entrapment that kept them safe from the winter. Protected skin from cold. The gravel is warm, an almost summer feel, as I walk barefoot and alive to build the comforting callouses. The grass, still brown from the deathly winter wind and the frost that drained it's luminescent identity. I dig my toes deep into the mushy earth, still cold from the thaw. I twirl in my skirt, still dressed from church. And I breathe as I feel the weight of winter leave this soul, if only for a while, the overwhelming burden ease a smidgen. I stand beneath the sun and I can just feel it smiling down on me.

This God, my God, whom I stupidly lose my faith in when the overwhelming feeling of tragedy forgets to stop, the pain is unrelenting, and I let doubt seep beneath the wings of His prescence. It takes a day like this, and a trustworthy friend for God's promise of never, ever forsaking me to set in. He never forgets the details to turn me around and make me stand in awe. 

The shadow that follows me when I lean against an old tree, offering wisdom from it's hundreds of years. How many times has someone leaned their weary head against it? How many times did it offer comfort in the nature it indwells in? How many times has God used it to portray His Glory? 

The breeze that offers peace, God's peace, blows my curly mess of hair behind my face and suddenly I can see. The constant of a rushing stream, because sometimes we need the fast pace to make it through, and also the stillness of stagnant water offering rest in the crazy of reality. And it's here that I can reflect.

 It's not that this hasn't broken my heart, it has, sometimes I feel into a million tiny pieces. So I swept them up, and gave them to God. But even the pieces I can't seem to find, I trust they are safe with Him and maybe there is a reason He didn't want me to find them again. It's that I've found joy, a joy that doesn't let me forsake my God, a joy that can still smile through every tragedy that comes in the middle of the night, while you're restfully slumbering, and wakes your peaceful dreams to a living nightmare, and all you want to do is sleep again. But still, you feel joy, still there is peace. It's not that the wounds don't hurt, they do, but the antiseptics of people that haven't forgotten a shattered heart and deal with your stubborn ways allow the hurt to subside, if only for a while. It's the first air that allows me to breathe and cast my burdens on Him. It's the blessings through the tragedy that remind me that there is still breath in my lungs. The pain reminds me that I am still alive and the joy lets me feel my heart beat, strong, inside this tiny life of mine hoping to create a snapshot that reflects God's beauty and capture a photograph of His glory in the millisecond I'm given in the span of eternity.