Breathing Again

I should have written about Holy Week before now. I should have written about Pascha. (The Orthodox Christian word for Easter.) Somehow, those things shook and blessed me to my very core; to such a profound degree that I have not been able or willing to share with many.


This time a year ago, I was dying. The man who had said he would marry me, the one I loved, had left me. I would never be a mom. With cells burning for oxygen, I was a fish with no water. A sinking, burning, choking, urgent thing I was.

Through the kindness of many friends, I was distracted until time had passed. Time is no cure, but it is a good analgesic. I continued.

Since then, much in my heart has changed. I am no longer a fish. Maybe I am like a chrysalis. I always thought that chrysalises were dry, dead-like things. I remember at Botanica one time, I chatted with the butterfly lady. She spritzed the dead things with water. They shivered! One of them even seemed to bend in half; to ‘touch its toes.’ They were alive… somehow they were breathing.

These days, I am breathing. I might still be encased in some amount of sorrow. But I breathe freely. Because of the grace of God, I am now imagining something new… That He is good, good, GOOD. I know this sounds elementary; a developmental task for the three-year-olds. Maybe I am only three.

But the sorrow is falling away, daily. I am still a chrysalis, but I am shivering and bending in the shower of grace.

Thanks be to God.