and you arise (a five minute post)

This week, I'm joining Lisa-Jo over at The Gypsy Mama to write, free and clear, for just five minutes. It's about letting loose, no editing or frantically rewriting... just enjoying the words and the truth that lives in them. Join us, and let your words fly free, too?

This week it's on: vivid.


I learned about hearts this week. I learned about the road dusty with hard, long questions and what it is like to set off on it without being sure if anyone will come with you. Without being sure if the answer sitting at that horizon line is the one you want or the one you're expecting or just the one that is there. And I learned what it's like to sit in your car, radio blaring, in a parking lot paralyzed by the realization of what your words build, what hope beats inside your ribcage.

This is what I know: you arise. You cry your eyes out, harder and more furious than the rain hurricaning your windshield. You exhale. You repeat, maybe once or twice. But you arise. You wake up, the next minute or day or ten days, and you hear it, echoing from the window and the open door - that this, too, is a part of the great work going on inside you.

This, even when you feel most like throwing a glass at the wall or driving all night, is the great work, the work that sadnesses and hard brave things build. This is the world that begins when you let your heart beat wildly and you live the one wild life and it is vivid in front of you.

I lie in bed this morning and the world is in technicolor and the light flashes off the snow and I know: there is nothing, in the end, that is not part of this great work. There is nothing, in the end, that will not sputter and spark and catch flame. There is nothing, in the end, that does not carry a piece of the promise.

Love,
Hilary