Once in awhile, I get a flashback of my old life.
The one that was buried in the grave.
Yesterday, it happened to me.
It was so brief, but it was a glimpse of a feeling I used to experience that feels so distant to what I experience now.
Spring is bursting new life open all around us.
St. Louis starts to come alive and the roads become more crowded as people yearn to get outside and shake off the silence of winter.
Yesterday, the sun was out in full force and the morning was bright and cheerful.
The kind of day that genuinely draws you into it.
And I remember that I used to wake up on days like these feeling such a mix of beauty and pain.
I needed to be high.
Or maybe I was groggy from smoking weed the night before.
And sometimes I just hated the thought of another day.
My life held rhythm with chaos beneath. I had a schedule and a job and a strong work ethic; I also had a strong addiction, sense of duplicity within myself, and a longing to grasp for what I could never reach.
But on those beautiful, bright days I would get a taste of the beauty I so longed for.
Yet, my mind was clouded and foggy.
Instead of the fullness of joy that spring intends to bring - I found myself feeling melancholy.
It felt so beautiful outside, but I still felt so ugly inside.
My inner world did not match my outer world. It never did. And when the spring came or the sun soaked day greeted me- I was reminded of the beauty I so desperately desired and the lack within me.
It’s like seeing in a mirror for the first time in a long time.
You remember who you are, but are also shocked at what you see.
Being high made everything blurry. Beauty was the background noise on a long slate of blur.
But it made me hungry.
It made me crave something that I could never find within me.
Beauty, with no pain.
Beauty, with no shame.
Beauty, that I could embody.
As I drove along yesterday, fully immersed in the glory of the day at hand- that old craving, that sense of dissatisfaction that marked the beginning of each day, flashed before me.
I remembered that the more beauty I found- the more I felt twinges of sorrow within me.
It came up in every sunset, every hike, every immersion of wonder I would find myself within.
An ache, within me, for something more than me.
Now, that feeling is so foreign to me.
My day does not hold regret over the way I woke up feeling.
My vision of the day is not clouded with sinful desire or a longing for more or better.
My hope is not built on the meager life I have built by my own hands.
My hunger for beauty has now been fulfilled in every way.
I am filled in the dark, cold winter.
I am filled in the bright, clear spring.
I am filled at dusk and at dawn.
I am filled in the in-between’s.
God wiped away all that sorrow, and bore all that pain.
The ache of the old was replaced with an ache of new.
No longer to know beauty, for I do.
No longer to seek beauty, for I have found it.
No longer to be satisfied, because I am.
The ache I now know is not filled with sorrow, only expectancy.
To see Him, face to face, I long for most.
To wake upon the rays of his grace.
To soak in the Son for all of eternity.
Days of beauty that represent joy & hope are no longer accompanied by pain.
There is simply a continuity; day by day, the joy of a life lived with the beauty of the world wrapped around me and in me and through me is what greets each day.
Jesus, my King, my beloved one cloaks me in His beauty.
His bride, I am.
Clean and pure.
Spotless and true.
No more duplicity or rottenness that comes through.
And His beauty pierces every movement of every day.
Hard days are hard.
Sadness still exists.
Sorrow will not last.
The difference is what happened internally.
My old self had the lens of a sick child- malnourished and never satisfied.
My new self has the lens of a loved one-
abounding in satisfaction and filled to the brim.
Pain does exist, but pain does not rule me.
Sorrow does come, but not from within me.
Beauty no longer alludes me, because it lives within me.