Monday, September 5, 2011

King Solomon Was Right... Ecclesiastes Says It All

Life is a cycle. Plain and simple. All that we do and no matter how much we experience. It really is all just the circle of life. The situations may differ, the circumstances may be fresh to us, but the crux of the matter is that the circle of conception, birth, life, & death happens spiritually and physically time and time again in our lifetime. Call it change, call it evolution, call it whatever you like, but Ecclesiastes says throughout that there is nothing new under the sun. That there is season for everything under the sun...

I've been thinkin' about this alot over the last week. I just sense this spirit of change all around. I sense the shifting in the Spiritual and I wonder how it will all look as it materializes in the natural. This last few years has been something straight outta Ripley's Believe It or Not for me, but this last few months has just flat issued a whipping the likes of which I hope I NEVER face again. And even in all that, I am keenly aware that this is life. Conception in various areas of life. The pains of labor. The moment that life is first thrust into the world. The bittersweetness of the way life happens. And the bittersweetness of the end of a thing.

It's amazing.Nothing short of amazing. God shows us this cyle in soooo many ways, but my favorite the last few years has been in the seasons changing. I have been so aware of the gradual, seamless, blending of the seasons from one to the next and of the definite stark contrasts in each. Not all the seasons are my favorites but there is something beautiful unique to every one. There is something that makes me take notice and make the connections to those same cyclical changes in my own life.

My last summer... it seemed so short-lived. The fall. It was filled with melancholy as I recognized the same shifts and changes but excitement because I still saw so much beauty around me. Then winter came. And winter lasted for an eternity. So many things died. So many things just seemed to stagnate and not move a muscle. The interminable nature of it has hurt almost as bad as the death that's come with it. But spring showed up a few months ago and the birthing pains began. It has been excruciating (and ya'll if natural childbirth is anything like it, I see why folks want drugs. Some things you just want to sleep thru. Seriously.) The labor pains. This new life trying to spring forth from the womb. It knows that it must leave the security of that place, or it and the carrier will perish. It has to emerge from the sanctuary of the womb. There is no other choice. Because it is destined to live.

Summer. The labor pains are almost done and summer is upon me. 5 years ago I was keenly aware of fall, drawn to it, in awe of it, take aback by the vividness of that perfectly seasoned time of year, amazed that part of the beauty of all those colors and changes lied in the fact that death was slowly coming for those things and that winter would lay it all barren for a time.

But now, 5 years later, I am keenly aware of summer.Of the warmth and heat and discomfort and beauty and brightness and boldness and relaxed, go-with-the-flow atmosphere. I'm captivated by the bold color and the fact that life is blooming all around in various shades and volumes and forms. I'm drawn to the life and freedom that comes with it.

I said a while ago that I miss me. And I do. The last few years it's like God took me and hid me in Himself in such a way that who I've always known myself to be and who most others have always known me to be has been totally hidden from sight. My appearance has changed. My attitude. My demeanor. There has been nothing about me that is what it was - who I used to be. And in many ways that's been welcome.

But in lots of ways, it's been tough.

If you've ever been there you know what I mean. Its one of those places in life where you are forced to dig deep and discover truth about you. Some good and some not so great. And as you discover, you are forced to embrace or get rid of some things. You are walking in a place that is bittersweet the whole way - because the good stuff, well, it's really really good. But that stuff you'd rather not deal with - it confronts you on a regular and forces you to deal with it. You are required to see beyond your flaws and insecurities and to get some real perspective on who you were, who you are, and who you are meant to be. It feels intensely public, but it is really intensely private. What you think should be plain to people around you is most often not - and that most often is due to 1) a refusal to see and 2) blindness born of their own humanity.

That's where I've lived for 5 years now.

But over the last few weeks, I've felt like summer inside. The girl I missed has become a woman I long to see live and breathe.... She's comin out. Choices I never thought I'd make again, I'm making. Freedom I never thought I'd feel, I'm feeling. Life. I want to live it. I'm going to live it. On my terms. And I feel great about everybit of that. The new things I've found about me, I love them. The things in me that needed to be dealt with, well... they've been (or are being) dealt with. And I'm finally ready to leave the womb and take on the next chapter.

A new cycle is starting for me and I plan to live it and languish in it and drink in every part of it, so that the next go-round, it's just a little easier to know that all the cares in the world and all the wailing and nashing of teeth is vanity, because there is nothing new under the sun. Just like Ecclesiastes says.

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