Trenches

My blog seems to have found a very transparent voice. To remain true to that voice, I have to be honest; I can't come up with anything to write about tonight. I have tons I have written tonight, but nothing I can post. As my writing is normally what is going on in my current world, there are some BIG things happening in the lives around me I just can't put up right now.

I am blessed by the people who trust me to do life with them. Life is hard. It's hard core, in-your-face, screaming mean sometimes. I find it doesn't have much rhyme or reason from time to time, and shell shocked I stand in debris waiting for God to start the process of restoration. I'm not standing in this blast zone of a personal encounter, but I am standing next to a friend, I have been, the last few weeks. Big, life changing, powerful stuff my girls have had to endure. Women are powerful things. We carry such weight with such grace. Even at it's rawest of emotion we move with grace and beauty.

When I know these things with my friends I am often quiet in writing, stick around long enough and you'll learn quickly if you are my friend you will probably end up in my writing one day. I write best when it's my own experience, however. I think I'm a lame fiction writer because the only character I know how to develop is my own, and that's a full time job!

So in an effort to make sure I write, but from my own experience: I am humbled and deeply honored I am able to be trusted to carry some of the hardest things I can imagine a woman carrying. I pray I never get used to the power of someone else’s experience in my life. I am humbled to get to do life with these women who shape my everyday. I don't understand everything, and I don't need too, their situations leave imprints on my soul as well and I have to find my own answers in a highly circumstantial and subjective world. Despite the situation though, there is something in the power of their circumstances that shows life as extraordinary; the resilience of a woman's heart, the strength of her spirit, and sisterhood. My girls are my sisters and I can't do life with out them. Tonight I want to kick the crap out of life and tell it to leave my girls the hell alone, but all that's gonna do is leave me looking crazy. What I can do is encourage you to think of who you're doing life with.

There is such beauty through the debris. As the dust settles I see my friends still standing and not only are they still standing but I'm standing with them. Of all the people in all the world I get to be the one who goes along with them. I hope your life is as full as mine is. I pray you are walking some hard yards with someone so they aren't alone in the battle. And to the few that I am writing this about tonight I love you, I'm committed to you, and tomorrow will be better. We press into hope together tonight.