Dry Bones

This past year has brought endless amounts of pain, tears, struggles, fights, growth, change, love, forgiveness, and healing.  I look in the mirror and cannot believe that I am the same woman who looked back at me a year ago.  I feel like my life has taken a complete 180 and has landed in this place that is so good, so rich, so challenging.  I feel as though everything is finally making sense.  All the brokenness, all the years of shame and guilt have brought me to this point.  This place of beauty, of peace.  I realize now that this, this present moment, is exactly where I am meant to be.  That all those years of numbness, those years I spent trying to shy the anger and the fear away, has brought me to this point. 

This past year has been one of the most difficult years yet for me.  I have been challenged to go deeper, to figure myself out more.  What do I love?  What do I think?  What do I believe?  What makes me sad, happy, upset, joyful?  To reconcile and forgive my past, to love my now and to look forward to the beautiful future I know I have.  Ahh to live. 

The last thing that Poppy said to me before he stopped speaking altogether has stuck with me throughout the years.  For those of you who don't know, my dear, sweet, life-loving Grandfather, my Poppy, had Alzheimer's Disease.  Most of the time he didn't know who any of us were, but always kept his lighthearted demeanor,  quick to laugh, always smiling.  I went to visit him for lunch one day and in a moment of clarity, he softly lifted my chin, looked straight into my eyes and said, "Beautiful". 

It has been almost 10 years since he died, and I have been struggling to see that beauty my Poppy always saw in me.  I would stare into my eyes, inspect my face,  criticize by body, only to find flaw after flaw, imperfection after imperfection.  Never once did I see that something that could draw a response out of a man who had lost all dignity, whose memory had disappeared.  I looked for years, searching for that beauty that my Poppy saw.  That pure beauty that was enough to bring a meaningful word to a man's lips who no longer knew how to string a sentence together.  For years I wondered, what did he see?

And finally, after all these years of holding on to insecurity, of holding on to shame, to guilt, to unworthiness, I can see a glimpse of the beauty seen by eyes that knew a depth deeper than a memory. 

Oh the freedom that self-forgiveness brings.  And it is keeps going.   This letting go.  This allowing the beauty of who I was created to be, that woman who loves life, who loves people, to be free. 

"I am bringing the breath of life to you and you will come to life!"