Clandestine Confessions

“Oh, my Jenna, what did you do?” He sat there skimming through my records sent over by the other hospital. Those numbers and stats in which I took pride breaking his heart. I never could have imagined the ripple effect my quest would have – the cost not only that I would pay but others too.
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I could not look him in the eyes.
It wasn’t shame.
It wasn’t fear.
I just could not see the hurt.
He was the one professional I came to trust through the years – in large part because he was the only one who ever spoke life into my future. He always called me higher, no matter how grim the circumstances on the ground looked.
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A couple years prior I sat in this exact seat as I was preparing to re-enter into the world, promising next time I would see him would be over dinner talking about my future treatment center. He agreed to fund it…if I agreed to full healing. He even penned a contract for both of us to sign – one I still hold in my possession.
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This moment could not have been more opposite.
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“I…I…I just wanted it to be over,” I say in a whisper. The tears I had been suppressing beginning to make their appearance. It had been months – the last place they fell were on my mom’s lap on the couch as I begged her to please let me go. Her objection the dam that would hold them back moving forward.
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“I truly am not quite sure how you made it.”
“I didn’t want to,” that fact rising up the fury in me. Rage burned internally at everyone and everything that halted my mission. “Close but not close enough it seems.”
“It is going to be a long road out. You know that, right? I am going to need you to want it and be willing to fight for it.”
He looked up and into my eyes.
“It will be difficult but not impossible Jenna. You have all my support along the way.”
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My yes came in a whisper – with dread and resistance and anger.
But also with an iota of faith….
An unexplainable trust amidst the uncertainty that this would not be for nothing. That this agreement to life was going to save my life – farther out than I could see.
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Fast forward 9 years, 7 months, and 3 days.
Me standing at the base of a mountain in Utah in my now permanent state of bliss.
Having just enjoyed a lunch in Park City – one I surrendered all control over to a friend without a single care or fear.
My mind fully present. And for the first time, in perfect alignment with my heart.
No distractions demanding my attention. No tug of war stealing my contentment.
Never more alive. Never more free. Never more me.
This is how it feels to have your opponent concede.
Defeated by a blindside – my one meek yes to life unpredictably holding within it infinite more.
A rescue mission without an end for liberation has no limit.
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“It might be hard to do this climb in a skirt,” he said.
I scoped the terrain, assessed the situation.
Although physically never here before, mentally and emotionally I knew this landscape well.
I looked up and into his eyes.
“It will be difficult but not impossible,” I said with a smile.
“Can I offer any assistance?” He outstretched his hand.
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My yes came in a roar – with joy and excitement and peace.
Spoken with vast faith; having evidence this time that the beauty I was about to witness at the top, although invisible to the eye at the moment, would be worth any struggle I endured to reach it.
And indeed it was…
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Purpose is produced in the pain of reaching our peaks.
There is no greater euphoria you will feel than when you are living in the midst of it.
It is in the living of life that we are given life.
Keep saying yes to it.
I promise it will all make sense one day….