The Rains

The rains have come.

They've come hard, plunging the world around me into a windblown gray frenzy of water. The summer is gone, as swiftly as it came, but I'm ready for fall. The fall has always brought me peace as my soul returns to a simpler place, cleansed by the water that it desperately needs and the cold that forces it to freeze or burn hotter. The way the season changes makes me feel like I could too, like I don't have to spend forever in a drunken-staggering through life.

And if I'm honest, it has been a rather-drunken stagger. The days have been long and dark, and getting darker as they grow shorter. I wake up, drive the long commute to school, sit in class and mindlessly cram my mind with information day after day, go to the hospital and come home and try desperately to study, try to see the people that I care about on a regular basis, try to deal with the emotion of seeing deeply sick and hurting people and what to feel and do about it, and then I'm going to bed and I find I haven't stopped all day just to... breathe. I feel most days as if I'm stumbling through life, not even normally walking through it. It's gonna be ok, I tell my heart. Soon, I will learn how to hear you again. 

But I realized today that I've forgotten how to be still. I am aching for a simplifying, a newness in my heart.

See, I used to know. I remember feeling able to slow my mind down long enough to realize where my thoughts were coming from, and why I was feeling the way I was feeling the moment. I remember what it was like to be in the moment, a breathtaking peace that surpasses all the moments that came before. But now, I am mostly conscious of fending off the feeling of panic that too soon will cause everything to fall apart... Or I am conscious of a numbness that feels more like a forgetting of something-- or of someone.

But you've forgotten, my heart cries. Somewhere along the way of living, you've forgotten to live. You have forgotten yourself, how to remember the truth. You have forgotten Me. 


Please God, my timid soul whispers, almost silently-- I want to live again.

I am learning to allow my soul to receive the newness it needs, even when it is scary. We must allow ourselves the grace to be cleansed in the times when we desperately need change. We must stay connected to our Source, we must be honest with ourselves about how we are really feeling, not suppressing emotion to please any person, not making ourselves into something we're not to please the world. We must give ourselves time. We must give ourselves honesty. We must give ourselves love.

May the change of the season bring a newness to your heart that you desperately need. Where you felt like you were at the end, may this time bring you a new hope that you have never known before, one that will whisper to you,

Better things are ahead than any we leave behind.

May you have peace.

All my love,

B