Twinborn

As we return again and again to Yellowstone this summer, I am really in awe that it was just a little over a year ago that I first stepped lightly into its borders.

Even then, I wrote: “I don’t know all that our future holds, but something inside of me tells me that we are at another turning point in our lives.” 

How right I was.  How little I knew.

Mystic Falls, YNP, with my cell phone camera (too rainy to take my real camera).  If a place looks this amazing with a cell phone picture, try to imagine how it looks in person!

Something about this place has expected more of me.  I have expected more.  I have known I was ready.  So I asked to be more.

The answer to my prayer has humbled me to the depths of my soul.  I am sorry I talk about it so much here but never actually tell it.  It’s just too much, too sacred, too mine.  I have never felt a greater gift, a deeper loss, a more acute suffering, a greater opportunity.

A year ago, I wrote this: “Joy and pain are twinborn.  Pain gives way to joy, because so often, we have to give up something in order to receive.”

Was I writing to my future self?  I don’t know if I’ve ever written anything more true.  I have ached at my grief, until I have finally come to a point where I have decided to choose life.  I have realized that in this suffering, my prayer was answered.  My prayer was answered.  Finally, I see that.

I have changed completely.  My heart is new.  My prayer was answered.  And that is a tremendous gift.