And It All Came Tumbling Down

So I have drafted at least three different posts over the past couple weeks thinking one of them would stick.  There is just so much to say and no good way to say any of it.

So here I am, "improv" writing these words, hoping they will somewhat make sense, and praying I am saying the right things.

Have you ever felt over-full?  Not your stomach, your heart.  Like your heart is so full of so many emotions and events and just life in general, that you're afraid if you trip it might all come spilling up over the edge and there will be no way of gathering it all back and carefully tucking it away?

Let's just say that I am extremely heart-full.

But it's not just sadness or anger or joy or love.  It's this complicated jungle-mess of everything I feel and wish and regret and hope and wonder.  It's a culmination of everything I thought I knew and everything I wish I didn't.

It's this tugging feeling of looking back over my shoulder and burying my head in my chest and forging ahead.  It's this road that I see in front of my feet - so exciting and full of hope.  It's this trampled path behind that I feel such devotion to but can't retrace my steps in its direction.

And it's this wall that I've carefully been building my whole life without ever really realizing it.  This wall of all the opinions I came to accept as facts, all the truths I came to know as faith, and all the love that somehow slithered its way into hate.  This wall of perfectly placed doctrines, of memories, of people, of trust.  Of all the things I've felt, past and present, of love and friendship and tears and laughter.  This wall of everything I've ever known and everything I've ever come to trust.

And it all came tumbling down.

This wall, my wall, came down brick by brick, exposing life itself, unguarded, unshielded, in its true form apart from what I'd come to make of it.

The irony is that I didn't need the wall.  And life didn't scare me.  And the truth hurt, but didn't break me.

I built my wall out of my own volition and my own foolish "need" to make sense of everything myself.  The wall did not protect me, but rather He who held me was my protector.  He who set me apart from the world.  He who came, He who loved, He who lived among sin, He who died for sinners, He who died for me.  He held me.

He is what remains when everything you trusted and believed is stripped away.

He is my wall.

He is the road in front of my feet.

He is the light unto my path.

And it all came tumbling down.

...Love, Anna...

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