The Break

Day 50

Sitting here in the sunshine and snow my mind wanders to the idea of grace. My body has never moved quite the way I’ve wanted it to and rhythm is an elusive thing that slips through my offbeat fingertips. Looking down my eyes start upon the calluses that arc across my palms and lead to the constellation of tiny scars that travel my wrists and forearms. The winter’s cold has taken some of my skin’s softness and my unruly mane tangles its way to my shoulders. As the birds sing their spring song I wonder what life would be like if I had done things differently. Who would I have become? Where would my love be directed? What would bring me joy? I think about how sometimes, I’m much better in print than in person and how the right words never seem to come until I am alone. A few years ago, before plane tickets and backpacks I remember yearning to be heartbroken. For art, to learn or for whatever reason my young mind thought the ache would make me grow. Older now, it seems so silly. In my desire for experience I missed the lesson. Everything takes it’s course and now, as the sun beats down and the birds sing, my heart, well, it’s a little bruised.

As the days pass I fetch water and cut firewood, write letters and whittle sticks. I keep myself as busy as one living in a cabin in the woods can. In my place upon the porch I watch as each afternoon the snow recedes just a bit further than the day before. There is a calm to the thaw that seems to settle into my bones. Coming into my smallness I wonder how many times these mountains have stood patiently while humans sat beneath working through love and loss and the confusion that comes from finding our way? At the edge of the moraine I sit for hours and wait for stones to drop to the frozen lake below. Closing one eye I take aim with a fistful of pebbles at a boulder. How spectacular the amount of fleeting happiness that can come from these tiny rocks connecting with their target. Everything that surrounds is so much older and wiser than myself and the silence that engulfs chips away at my uncertainty. All of us are such a tiny affair when it comes to the nature we seek out. With evening comes the moon’s soft light and I finally see what I had wanted so desperately years before.

I know now bravery and vulnerability are not always opposites and alone does not always mean lonely. As for grace? I cannot sing you a song but I can tell you a story and ask to hear yours. I may not be able move with rhythm but oh, do I move. My grace is in my words, shaky as they may be, they are my own.

Heartbreak hurts but there is beauty in it. That ache is a reminder that you've chosen to live life with your heart in your hands. That you have chosen to feel and to give. As each of us stumbles through this what more could you want than a reminder that you have decided to keep going? There is grace in letting go and grace in living fiercely. Grace in knowing that though your feet have wandered what you’ve felt has been true. There is grace in feeling silly and grace in remembering that love is possible. Grace in saying what’s needed to be said and listening to what has to be heard. Surely, there is grace in scraped knees and bad dancing just as there is grace in not always being the first to run when the going gets rough. Grace, in all it’s mysterious forms, is resting your head down to sleep knowing how much more you’ve still to learn.

Alone with my knotted hair and dirty nails I sit on my porch and settle into myself. It’s the 50th day of my northern adventure and I am thankful, I am learning, and I am finding my grace in the most unexpected of places.