Clandestine Confessions

I had different plans for my 8/28 in 2021 than the one that played out.
I had put it on my calendar a few years ago.
I held onto the vision – even when everything in life pointed in the opposite direction.
Even when it seemed like an impossibility. Even with the odds stacked against it.
Against us….
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A glimmer of light appeared in the darkness earlier in the year to renew my trust in the process.
To keep me fighting for it.
The warrior spirit in me refused to accept defeat, regardless if it would cost me everything.
Regardless if it would kill me.
Regardless if it would leave me a shell of myself.
All of the above which would happen.
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For I made the choice to keep going long after reaching the conclusion that the illusion was never going to change into something real. I did not want to embrace truth.
In hindsight knowing it would have set me free.
However, also in retrospect knowing there was a part of me scared to live unhindered.
I claimed to feel safe…but was I because I was “home” or because I was confined?
Healing has revealed the latter.
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It took me reaching the darkest depths of despair for me to surrender.
Scarred and scared.
Used and abused.
Abandoned and ashamed.
On a walk with God in April, I deleted the event from my phone.
I erased the dream from my mind.
I loosened my grasp on empty promises and embraced reality.
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And yet, it followed me during my trip – making it apparent there was still healing to be done.
I confronted it. Head on. No running. No hiding. No fearing.
As I watched a man propose at the Ryman Auditorium.
As I witnessed a wedding in Nashville, Tennessee.
As I observed a couple in their wedding attire doing a photoshoot at Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
As I saw four couples doing their engagement photos at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.
As I overheard a man and woman planning their wedding at the Anthony Chapel in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
As I encountered a photographer editing last weekend’s wedding photos while at a Starbucks in Asheville, North Carolina.
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As I told my friend, my pain wasn’t over grieving a person or the event that wasn’t happening.
I am deeply grateful to no longer have my heart in those hands.
I am immensely thankful to still have this last name.
My pain was for what I had to endure physically, emotionally, and mentally to reach that place. For the parts of myself I once held so sacred I sacrificed to exist in that world. For the truth that love heals I have so boldly claimed to be manipulatively used “for” me – or should I say against me.
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The only way to heal is to feel, and that is what I did. With every encounter, I let the emotions come – without restraint.
And then when the tears dried up and the screaming silenced, I would offer another surrender of a tie to that former life.
And I would commit to living louder.
I would go and do something that would reignite the life in me, remind me of the woman I TRULY am – fiercely strong, boldly courageous, abundantly alive, joyfully unrestrained.
From choosing a life based on the need to be chosen to choosing a life based on the need to be authentically me – one could not have happened without the other.
The purpose in the pain.
That radical transformation being what this journey is all about.
The allowing of every trial and tribulation to lead you deeper into the identity of who you have been called to be.
And I now stand confidently closer than I ever have been.
Aware of my worth and vowing to never again settle for anything less than butterflies….