Hearts spinning

Long hours at a blogging conference brings cancer crashing onto my radar. I live like sheets drying on a clothesline, long loops of cloth rising up again to the pins, then the next long loop, and on and on. Rest, participate, rest, participate, repeat. I have made the transition from the mantra of my 20's (I'll sleep when I'm dead) to the requisite realization of my 30's (I'll die if I don't sleep).

Hours are bathed in tears, and then bathed in laughter. I find out what a laughter hang-over is for the very first time in my life. The trancendant beauty of both authentic pain and hilarious joy crash together like two waves meeting to form the monster roll of blue water swirling you down a pipeline of experience, a rush like no other. I play tambourine and sing harmony on stage for one song with Christa Wells, then stand in the audience hiding my face in my hat, hands raised in praise, as her words uncover my pain.

I go to sessions and workshops and marvel at the beauty of newfound friends, souls wounded and worn and ever writing, writing. Sara Sophia is as luminescent as her name, her words like pearls on a string for a whole table full of sobbing women.

New layers of my church history find light in the words of Ashleigh, who was brought to depths of spiritual pain I have not yet endured. As her tears roll, I learn and bask in the beauty of a soul dragging dirty story into light.

I watched from afar as she became famous in the blogosphere, and adored her before I met her, but Elizabeth surprises me with her vulnerability and humanity, her beautiful smile and the mannerisms that are so like my dear friend Amy. My heart aches with missing, and aches at the same time with meeting.

The snow falls in a hurricane of white, and I laugh with some dear children from Florida. We stand in the hall watching out the window and laughing, laughing. It's beautiful.

And so I am exhausted.

Broken.

Filled.

Kept.

Thank you for your prayers.