You are not leaving, you are arriving

Some days I think I'm watching myself go through open heart surgery. I watch as each morning run stitches me back together, how the smell of the water and wind over Coy Pond fills my lungs. I watch as a few short days in a city I love gives me 1,000 gifts:

Chop't salads at Union Station
the walk to Eastern Market
Port City Java
laughing until my sides ache on the Metro
running past 1615 L St and remembering
cupcakes and 30 Rock
good wine at happy hour and telling the secret I had been holding
running to the Capitol Building in the bright cold sun
leaves crunching on East Capitol St.
beginning to count gifts again in the journal from Italy
the zoo lights at the National Zoo
the warm cider and the long walk back down memory lane

and they go on and on. And each one is a stitch back together. Each one knits the broken jagged edges to each other.  My eyes are tired and my feet don't want to carry me any more. The idea of resting or waiting or listening to the silence feels impossible... but this is the season where my heart is healed.

Hearts really do heal. I don't know if you can hear me. But if you wonder about whether your heart will be healed, I'm leaning in close to tell you:

You will be full to overflowing.

I promise you. I promise you that time and winter and Advent heal. I promise that lighting candles and drinking tea and walking through your disappointments or your sorrows will move you to the other side. I promise that even as you pick your feet up to go up one more flight of stairs and you set your hands to the keyboard again, doing the small brave beautiful thing will heal you. I promise you with all of my heart because I wonder too, because I don't always trust it, but because if I tell you then I'll try to hope in it, too. Our hearts will become beautiful.

Last year a good friend of mine and I wrote "Poetic Friday" emails every week. We shared stories and always ended with a poem. She gave this one to me when I'd been having a tough week, and now I'm giving it to you, dear reader.

He is giving us back whole hearts.

The Journey

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

small, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving
you are arriving. 

~ David Whyte ~