Heavy Things

Florence is the soundtrack for the day.
Shake it out, shake it off. 



Well good Lord. I've been elsewhere for months. But I'm coming back more and more all the time.

I forgot what I can do with words. The arrangement of letters and things that aren't just noise and aren't just about me in the sun with a chai tea latte at a picnic table. Keyboards and characters.

I'm swept up in the music of life and the astounding beauty of chance leading to the whispering moment when time slows and a chill rolls across my back. Life says, "This is pure and good, dear. Rest."

The goodness makes me realize just how good it is, the essence of the thing in itself being so very beautiful.

Talking in circles.

What I mean is this. 

We, many of us, have a habit of finding heavy things on our backs: scandal, cancer, abuse, divorce, death, despair, depression. We then bear the weight of the pain, the secrets, the sickness. Brokenness: the constitution of tragedy. And the harshest inherent pang is the sly grasp of darkness when it settles on us and we forget what makes us human.

We have the ability to comprehend the badness, to carry it, share or shelter it, to shoulder it.

And we have the ability to shake it, to shrug the devils off our shoulders and rip out the deepest claw.

We, again, many of us, have the habit of letting the heavy things name us, shape us.


The blessing is here: the goodness in my life reminds me of how much I have shrugged away, and of what I still carry, the residue of disaster that makes me who I am:
Em, a product of...

Dark days and basketball games.
Youth group retreats and awful Halloweens.
Christian community and measle immunity.

Breakdowns. Lemont. Rocky Mountains and Great Plains. Rocks and rivers, brothers and sisters. Lakes. Salt. Broken-hearted boys that never could be fixed. Grand grandparents.

And so much music. The melodies that run me up and down.

I am the cocktail drink of everything I've ever seen, Daughter to the Creator of all the greatest scenes.


I've no need for the nagging presence of the bad things telling me who to be. The big disasters that make me forget that my capacity to love is limitless, and boundless.

So I shrug off all the ugly, and embrace the beauty I see in the architecture of the Fox River when my favorite playmate says, "God knew exactly what he was doing to make this all look exactly as it does." And He did.

The essence of the thing, the beauty in itself, that heartbreak lays itself to the side when its time comes: the ugly fades away.

The good persists.

 And oh, how much good there is, how much better things get.

A frightened girl finds a safe place in a drunken gamble. She teaches the art of tenderness. It all falls together.

We, many of us, let the heavy things define us.

But what if we defined ourselves by the slow moments when we feel a little more alive, and the lines that hang in our memories... You're changing me. You're beautiful. I'm better when you're with me. I'm learning to trust again. I am the way I am for a reason, and I want to share it with you. I can share with you. I'll stay with you here. I'm happy. It's wonderful.

What if we defined ourselves by the awe that fills us in the most precious sights: our children, nieces and nephews. An eagle bowing in the sky. Water crashing through a garden. The laughter of an old friend.
The quirks of our grandparents.

The moment in the precise center of balance: time goes too quickly and time drags on.

So shake it off.

And write your story with whispers Life lays in your breath: "This is good. And there is more to come."


It's hard to dance, with a devil on your back, so shake him off.