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...