space

I’m not sure the proper pace of life for the things it ushers in without warning. For a moment it all stands still. The breath is held suspended in the lungs. The heart is drawn up to the jaw. Nothing moves for lack of knowing where to go just yet. It’s just… there. 

The next exhale can blow frantic like a siren. Or like a storm front at the height of summer’s swelter, like last night. Or like the measured decompression of a pressure cooker. But decompress we must. We must keep breathing even when the air is swept from the floor of our mouths.

I crave big pockets of space for the big life things. Room to hold what’s been delivered to my lap, even if unsolicited. But my lap is often already full with big things. Much of my life is asking heaven for more capacity since I can’t control the deliveries. I can only control me, and that’s debatable. 

Figuring out how to hold it all has been lifelong. I mostly understand that I cannot. But how I try. My heart is the continuous onboarding and unloading of a finite vessel. Limited, yet still daring to believe in the unlimited. Knowing that to make room it requires plowing and digging. Expanding. Tearing. And rearranging. And purging. And all the subtraction words before the addition ones. Hollowed out for the sake of more. That’s how it works. That’s the design. And I’ve stopped railing against that part. It is what it is and my melancholy parts have (mostly) accepted it as wisdom. 

I’ve found there are very rarely seasons for independent experiences or emotions. Like all joy, or nothing but pain. Like all life, or all death. It’s oftentimes a mixed bag. A potent blend of the polarized two. Maybe because joy is a deep stream that flows below the surface of our kicked-up crust. It’s never not there, trying to find higher ground. Even if you have to dig like mad to find a puddle of it, it can be found. Even if it’s a mud bath when it touches our dusty hearts. I know of someone who once mixed spit and mud and fashioned some wild joy with it. How unlikely and yet very much like life. 

There’s water and then there’s dirt. There’s joy and then there’s pain. And they are rarely exclusive. So, I can’t divide my days as I’d like. Can’t take all the color out to derive a safe distance between black and white. We are far too colorful and complex. Far too integrated for that sort of segregation. For if we do, we forfeit the sweet that can spindle itself around sour. The sweet we discern as such only against the sour. We relinquish the joy that can spring up from the wound of pain. The wound that is also a wellspring when we allow it to flow.

Our stories are rarely all good or all bad. Our moments are not all too much or never enough. Our capacity will fluctuate, contingent upon grace. And every thing delivered to our laps will have an invitation to exhale once again. Then inhale. Then exhale. And then you’re breathing. Living. Being.