“Lean in,” I heard. It was a simple, quiet statement. I knew what it meant instantly and it scared me. It meant:

\ Stretching a little farther in embracing (even the idea of) joy and hope for the future.

\ Releasing more fear that the bottom might drop out. Again.
\ Trusting that the worst is behind and the best is yet unfolding.

Lean in. Drink deep…

One of the hardest things in the world is learning and then confronting who you are. Who you really are when everything that’s made you “you” isn’t around anymore. But now we’re all doing it. We’re all finding out who we REALLY are. Together. Right now. And it’s happening fast.

So what’s the last thing you heard? Do you remember? Have you finally stopped long enough yet during this quarantine to ask?

Resting is about more than jumping on a plane and getting away from it all or having a whole five minutes, hour, or day to oneself. You can be in either of those scenarios and many others and still not run into it. Why??

GUILT 

Good ol’ fashioned guilt. 

My routines were safe. They kept me secure in my mind even as they kept me fastened to my bronze-version life. I’d asked for this. I didn’t know it at the time of my asking. It didn’t sound like that at all. It sounded like groaning. Deep, unsatisfied, guttural groaning. And it wouldn’t stop. 

Every time you become romantically involved with someone, what many fail to fully acknowledge is that most people have had several romantic relationships before you came along. Usually, what has been left is a series of half-made buildings – some of them greatly decayed/decaying because they were half-erected and abandoned so long ago. Someone else moved in and didn’t necessarily start building on the last erection (no pun/all puns intended) but, rather likely began building in another part of the ‘city’.

I realized then that I had continued to hold onto one residual thought; one remnant feeling that was very effective at preventing me from moving forward with any sense of urgency. That residual remnant was this: that there was something to ‘go back’ to.