Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Stretch or Break


Everything around me seems broken.  We’ve broken so many of my grandma’s glasses in the last two months.  And two in the last two days!  Do they have an expiry date or something?
Is God trying to tell me something about letting go?
What does this all mean?
Change is hard.  Growth is often uncomfortable.
I’m in a difficult process of refining a play that is not working and now it needs major changes.  I want out.  I don’t want to remain in the trenches, slogging away at something that is just not coming together.

Change is not like putting on a new dress or slipping into something a little more comfortable, --it comes with a death.
Dying
Spring is about new life.  But it takes a certain death to get there.  But just like the pain of childbirth is forgotten in the joy of the child, so is the death of winter forgotten in the glow of spring.
My son Donovan was baptized recently and the symbol is fresh for me of dying and rising out of death into new life.
My happy sneakers next to a dead fish,
My sons find boxes at a construction site burn pile and turn them into
sleeping bag boxes around the campfire,

Oh God, could it be that the labor pains of my play will soon be forgotten in the cry of a newborn story?

That day seems so far away now, I’m not even sure it’s worth the agony.

Four glasses chipped and breaking, shattering -- all from Grandma.  Grandma Meltebeke kept all her things nice.  Before I received some of her belongings offered, I tried to warn Mom and Dad that I would not let them sit behind closed cupboard doors waiting for a special occasion, but that I would use them every day.

And for years I did.

They quietly served their purpose until they cracked, chipped and eventually broke from the stress or an accident.


And some day they will be replaced.

I hope I'm not quite like that.  Not yet.

I hope I don't become brittle, but soft so I can morph like an amphibian.  Once all my muscles and instincts are ready to match my desire for air, I’m going to have to lose my tail in order to explore new ground.  I must change my pattern so that I can expand, and this means letting some things go.

I hate it.

I’d rather do something pleasant and comforting than keep stretching in this painful time.  But if I’m not stretchy, then I will break.  And start again.

Oh God.

Please keep me holding on, breathing and stretching.  And trusting for your wisdom in it all.

The little buds on our trees up here are not ready to bust, they're primed and bulging, but dare not until the frosts quite frolicking in the night hours.

I wonder if I'm building up leafage inside the bud, ready to burst with the warm wind of the muse of truth and art. 

For now, I must wait.









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