Saturday, May 5, 2012

Imperfect Circles

...I wrote half a novel last summer.

And at the end of the summer, after I had written all the painful things I had to write, put a cap on my pen and turned the sheets over, to rest untouched in my desk during sophomore year.  I was at peace with its incompleteness, which is actually much more (novel) than it sounds, for me anyway.  I don't leave things undone.  I didn't know how to finish it, though.  I was afraid to write about a healing that might not last.  I was too attached to my own heart, to my own story.  I didn't think it was up to me.  But now I know better.

In February, I started a new novel.  Only come to find out it was an extension of the old one.  The story was not complete, and what I realized last night, was that I have a mandate to finish it.  I know now that despite how this circle ends, whether or not the line meets where I desire it to, healing has been had.  So far, the circle is not one that was drawn with a geometric plastic but by a child, a parent leaning over perhaps, guiding her hand with fear and trembling against the weight of an unfamiliar, profane pencil.

Happiness is not a sign of healing, although it can be a consequence.  Most of the time, though, healing culminates in changed action, in a shifting of the heart.  Health, vigor, are felt with a fervor.  Despite how my novel finishes, I have this.  It is unchangeable, irrevocable.

The Lord giveth and taketh away, but He allows some things to remain.  We discover them when the dust blows up, when we dip our toes in the water that once shocked us with its cold indifference.  We acquire a surface of knowledge for the cold, learn to relax our bodies into it, close our eyes and feel the pressure of the invasive waters.

For it is only then that we realize His hovering over them.

He is the Muse of the frigid deep.  And the pencil becomes lighter with each new but utterly imperfect stretch of line.

Turns out it had been Divine the whole time.

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