The View from the Top

August 29th, 2015

I don't need candles to pass the hours into another year on earth,  for my birthday, the mountains have called and I must go - my thirty-one years on this planet has been an undying series of mountains, curves and swerves, pinnacles and valleys of shadow and death, despair and reawakening from the depths of the tomb...I am usually one to cross off birthday celebrations...this year I am celebrating - not by fighting the great unknown - but embracing it...with a weekend trip to the North Carolina Mountains...I am coming home in a way, the mists and rugged hills of my home state have always haunted me with peace and an explorer's disposition.  I am rediscovering my phoenix wings and the glory and majesty of the adventure life affords - even in the madness of changes in seasons.



My rambling heart has crossed the threshold of another trip around the sun. I have always ignored birthday's as just another exchange of the moon into dawn - however this year I am celebrating my life.  Life is an extraordinary dance is a vent of chaos and I'm grateful to God for the immense blessings, HIS grace has brought into my life.

As I look back on my thirty-one years on this planet - instead of feeling rejection and heartache for all the fallen dreams that guarded my heart in my younger years - I am fearlessly learning to forgive myself and let go of the hurt.  I acknowledge the detours as lessons forking me into a untraveled byway I needed to endure on foot - testing my soul in the refining power of trial by fire.  


Life is always lived in the juxtaposition of routine and transition.  In my thirty-one years I have lassoed adversity from emotional abuse and betrayal...I am beginning to recognize lost fragments of myself...I allowed my self worth to be chained to other people's ideals - instead of resting in the grace of my own dynamic energy that God has given me.  While I have always been fiercely independent and empathetic - desperate to sow good in this world, I have clutched my fear and allowed myself to be caged in by past abuse.  

I have always lacked security in my own skin.  I am learning to dance in my joy and the joy of the Holy Spirit.  

My life has been one heartbreak after another.  Loss, pain, hurt, loneliness, struggles and hardship and yet it has been in the suffering - in the desperate times that God's light has shone like diamonds in the rough - stars in a sea of night, a firefly on the cusp of summer.  Life is not meant to be easy, Life is meant to be lived.  Living means moving.  Living means breathing.  Living is learning lessons and being willing to listen and follow the tread of an old faded map and a friends advice, without compromising our hearts.  Life is a delicate balancing of holding on and letting go.  I see it as the dove who first left the ark - able to fly, and in flying setting the world a light in a peace - 'the storm is over.'

I have always loved the mountains - In the mountains I find peace.  I am beginning to realize that mountains are a living metaphor - a eon of testimony for how life's greatest beauty and foundations is not formed by straight predestined roads, but rather the hardship of climbing and blazing a path in desert sands, rocky precipices and dense forests.  We must see the forest for the trees, but may we never forget one tree is intricately and independently woven into the tapestry of a forest.


It is easy to get lost, to feel forgotten, but when we get lost in the Holy Spirit we find in the infinite insignificance of the chaos of the world - how significant we are to God and as God's own - how integral it is that we participate in life - with an appreciation of its beauty and grace - willing to love ourselves and also being willing to sacrifice the easy roads for the rocky terrain - the terrain that builds our character and helps us to feast in a banquet of mercy.  Life is not a solitary game.  Life is a symbiotic breath in tune with the forest and hills, mesas and sky.

So how do we bridge this quandary of freeing the independent spirit - letting go of the fear of pleasing others, while still being integrated into a society.  This is not an easy task - but for me when we place ourselves in solitary confinement - we are caged by our own faculties - unable to grow and heal, and when we refuse to allow the storm within ourselves flood the noise with peace - then we are also prisoners - wandering like ants marching...

God is the root we must plug into - a tree is firmly rooted in the forest ecosystem and yet a tree stands alone and in communion.  We cannot live our lives so confined by the ways of the world that we fail to allow our Spirit, the Holy Spirit within us, to roam free.

We are free by Christ and by love - and mercy and grace.  We are free to dance and sing in the wild abandon of a heart's infinite life when God breathes life into us - and in that life, our independence we can serve our neighbor - not motivated by greed and self-importance - but a desire to share in mercy, to break the bread of ourselves and share in the cup - so that in tears we may be shoulders to lean on and in the waking of brilliant dawn in a summer sky - we can find release - the fearlessness to know that for every night there is a dawn and the dawn is always on fire in our hearts - if we just be still and ignite the SPIRIT of LOVE and MERCY within us.



At thirty-one I look back at my life and its wildfire dance of phoenix smoke rising.  The air is clearing and I can confidently step off the edge of the wild with my feet grounded and in flight.  Running but not restless.

Stay tuned as I blog about our mountain adventure in Blowing Rock and beyond...

Going to the Mountains; Going Home

'Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity” John Muir

I hunger for wildness, my bones thirst for its grace.  I starve in the city streets, lost in traffic jams and skyscrapers - unable to see the unbridled sky, where clouds dazzle as the sun's diamond dust in the late August heat.

For my 31st birthday, my restless hungry heart demanded a rendezvous a chance to chase the wildness in my soul.  The past thirty-one years have been a dance of chaos and light, extreme darkness only making the stars shine all the brighter.  I find in the constellations a compass reflecting the truth of God's powerful light even in the depths of deep darkness in my soul and in this wild struggle with my beasts of fear and doubt - I find my way home to HIM and in HIM I unlock the key to myself as sunrise breaks the dawn.

A year ago I moved back to my hometown of Raleigh NC and while I enjoy the amenities of top-notch shopping and the meandering city sidewalks in my neighborhood near Cameron Village - I cannot find rest here with the pollution and aggression of fast lane life, where everyone seems to be going somewhere and yet no where at all.

John Muir's quote at the beginning of my post perfectly surmises my hunt own hunt for wildness...to tame and release the wildness within my fragile human heart and instead dance in the glory of nature's fury and flight.  

My deep desire to re-discover communion with the mountains pierced my heart after my mother and I were robbed at gunpoint at an area shopping mall.  Suddenly the fear of losing became secondary to the fear of not living with an abundant heart.  My peace - the peace of Christ, is ignited in my heart in the natural wonder of HIS creation - nature is my release - everything made by human hands pales in comparison to the beauty of God's creation - a sculpture of fire and ice.  

I tend to ramble when I write about nature - yet in this post I feel my rambling is a reflection of my heart able to take flight.  After years of suffering psychological abuse and trying to conform to broken standards of a world in disrepair - I am learning to find peace in myself and to forgive myself and learn to trust in God's mercy and mercy is every present in the wilderness.

It is not a coincidence that biblical scriptures are set amid the breaking points of the desert - in wild places - sometimes it is only when we are forced to search outside of our comfort zone and learn to navigate God's country that we find ourselves looking inward and turning to our Creator to sow in us abundant hearts - founded in the cornerstone of mercy and redemption, peace and fortitude, resilience and the art of letting go.

I will dedicate the next few blog entries on my quaint birthday excursion to North Carolina's Blowing Rock and the neighboring High Country of these ancient Appalachian hills...

From the earth we were created out of dust and the earth is our temporary home - when we go to the mountains we find the peace to accept our humble place amid giants and the supreme order of the land - and in the mountains we are not venturing into a new place - instead we are coming home - home to the peace of ourselves - the ability to perceive beauty in life's obstacles and acknowledging the vast view of the wilderness within ourselves waiting to be explored and our call to help others in their wilderness steps.  No mountain can be climbed alone, as no human heart can stand as stone.