The gold in the dark

This I promise you: I am as human as ever.  I foil in the dredge of life like so many others.  I feel my hand tremble when I reach for the light in my darkest hours.  This I promise you: I will do my best, but I must let you that I have been wounded, broken open, scarred, charred, chipped at, dismantled, scraped to bone.  This I promise you:  I will embrace my past and see the million glimmering jewels I have been gifted from it all.  It shines beautifully, like a  sky in midnight blue and silver.  I tell you, I have failed, I have been wronged and I have wronged others, my hurt- hurt others.  I've laid on the cold tile floor of a small studio apartment while my three year old daughter slept in the bed next to me as I cried into a pillow a mournful cry that was never mentioned to anyone...until now. 

There have been these moments:  utter despair, where I have questioned the unanswerable, where I have flung my arms towards the heavens, cursing the Creator.  I promise you I have traveled soul deep into healing, but sometimes I slip back into old beliefs or step into the familiar narrowness of an older version of myself.  There have been nights of worry, anxiety, body-numbing boredom and overeating.  Days spent hidden inside for fear I might be too ugly for the world to see.  But, because of these experiences I can promise you that I'll hold you close through the all wrecked and done moments, through the stale nights and failed attempts of trying to be "good" for others.  I promise, I will look you in the eyes and meet you with the softest, untouched place in my heart that is always pure and aglow.  I promise you that there is such a place as the "untouched pure and aglow".  No matter how much pain our fragile bodies have endured, no matter how many wounds, hurts or how many ashes you rose up from...that holy place exists.  Within.

I confess that it hasn't been easy and that I don't have it all figured out, but I am in a knowing place that having it all figured out is further away from myself, further away from what lies at the core of my being.  When I look to the earthly nest, I see the trees in their bare, and in their dark.  They are leafless and naked, but they are still reaching for the heavens.  They believe and they "know".  I promise you:  there is gold in all of this dark.