Starting from Scratch

My mantra has been my countdown. It's almost like I'm Will Smith in I Am Legend and I'm keeping record of my days in this craphole of a city that was once so beloved and so familiar and is now so desolate. I see the remnants of the life I once had while I stoically hold onto the hope and knowledge that I will be able to put it right again. I am tormented by the awareness that this was all my own doing, the choices I have made, the songs I have sung, the poems I have written.


As I walk past a mirror I do not recognize the woman who passes.


She is beautiful and confused. She is happy and swirling. She is confident and self-conscious. She is scared and alone and filled with love and friends. She is one woman with so many contradictory thoughts and longings. She is the old Jessica, the one who was married and heavy and insecure and was living an after-school-special. She is the modern Jessica, the lady who was in love and athletic and living a fairytale. She is Jessie, the little girl who the grown-ups said "doesn't have a mean bone in her body." She is Jess, the fiercely loyal friend who takes on her friends' battles on their behalves. And she is a new person. A woman.


In a crux.


A new identity on the verge of blossom. A cicada nymph ready and yearning to shed her skin, depart from her borough and emerge in the daylight. After years as a chrysalis, I am screaming to be relieved of my cocoon!


I daydream of a circadian rhythm. I daydream. I can feel the sun on my face as the romance of my life-past dances across my closed eyelids. I can feel my body emerge from my bed, well rested and happy. I can smell my Madagascar vanilla red tea brewing in the morning as I lie in the dark of my living room before the sun has risen. I can hear the waves, the guitar and the melodic voice of the pilates instructor whispering from my television as I begin my workday before the world has risen. My lungs shudder in the piercing cold of the dawn as I run down the street to greet the sun, a song in my heart and a playlist in my mind. My eyes can see the pavement change from sidewalk, to gravel, to street, to gutter, to overpass, to my front step. My intelligence can remember its freedom of thought during those morning runs when it could run-wild. My derrière can feel the sofa underneath as I sit and snuggle while watching a movie or reading a book. My hands find the idle time used to chop vegetables and experiment with dinner. My teeth chew slowly and my mouth savors my meal. My lips smile as they laugh with friends because they know that there is no agenda for the next day or month and they can just relax and smile. My body is easy in its sway because it knows that its own agenda is to heal and love.


My soul lights like a candle.


And so I count the months, weeks and days.


And I hope and I pray that I don't disappoint myself.


But the difference,


the one small thing,


the tiny, minute, variance


of this new woman whose arms can feel that finish line and whose fingernails are prying through the opening in her shell,


is that her lungs fill with the cool, refreshing, hope-filled air of confidence in the Holy Spirit.


THIS WOMAN is assured.


This woman sings of His love for her with every step she takes because it is His hand which has held her up when she has felt like crumpling into the carpet. It is His shoulder she has cried upon when school and work have found her weary to the bone. It is the heartbeat in His chest that she has listened to when she has laid alone in her bed, lonely and longing. It is His words of comfort that she has read when she just needed someone to understand, looked around, and found no one to empathize. It is in Him that she finds the courage to press forward when the enemy glamorizes the ease of giving up and giving in. It is through His eyes she sees herself in the mirror when the enemy reminds her of the weight she's gained during these years in school, work, and motherhood. It is His value of her worth that she fights for, not the enemy's lies which place her worth in her waistline or the opinions of men.


This woman, this Jess, Jessie, Jessica, Jessiepalooza, Reindeer Love, this daughter, mother, sister, aunt, friend, student, employee, coworker, princess, child of God,


this woman is not going to stop,


she will not give up.


Remember, she is a lioness, she is in the grasses of the prairie chasing her change and embracing it.


She is connected to her feelings subjectively and objectively. She is dualism incarnate. A woman and a child, the past, present and future of her own making guided by the careful hands of God. Quietly listening for his direction, trusting in Him.


I am ready to love and to live, and this countdown is excruciating. But my-oh-my, will these lungs fill clean, fresh and true the evening of December 20th, 2008.

***after posting this I started listening to a sermon podcast, I arbitrarily chose one on apostleship. Five minutes in, the pastor says this:

There are two main ways to know what you're supposed to be doing with your life. The first one is, what do you love? … What you are passionate for you were born to do. And the second way that you know what to do with your life is, what are you afraid of?

How many of you know that the dogs of doom stand at the door to your destiny? The children of Israel were supposed to go into where? The Promised Land. How many of you know what they were afraid to do? Go into The Promised Land. What you're supposed to do with your life you'll be scared to death to do.

How many of you know that the dogs of doom stand at the door to your destiny? Many of us never enter into our destiny because the devil put the dogs of doom there? Whenever you get close to these barking dogs you know your destiny lies on the other side of that. What you're supposed to be doing, you'll be scared to death to do.

Jesus said, "he who wants to save his life will lose it." …

-----Welp, I don't know if you see where I'm going with this, but if you've been reading what I've written these past couple of years then you're having an a-ha moment with me. The dogs are barking! They're yelping! So then, I know that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, and I gave up my life to save it.

Clean, fresh breaths fill my lungs! I will fill my lungs with words of invitation to God.