Winter Solstice

“Today is the darkest day and the beginning of the light. Pray for peace.”

For many years those have been what I have written in notes to friends on December 21st. I like solstice because it is about darkness and light. But today looking at those words it hit me that I am having an inner solstice too.

I have had a couple of hard days. Stuff with kids and stuff with us. More intimacy becomes more fear; moving closer to commitment sets off deep fears--mine and maybe his too.

So this morning when I heard, “Today is the darkest day and the beginning of the light” I thought, “Yes, this is the day that it shifts—from testing and pulling back to believing and moving toward, and from wondering if he really loves me to knowing we love each other. Any fights now are just us fighting our way to decide the kind of couple we want to be and not us tumbling off a cliff into the abyss.

Darkness becomes light. And peace

Lost and Found

Here is the hard part. How do I know in which direction growth lies? Or does it lie? Is becoming more vulnerable and trusting the way to work against my old fears and scars? Can I trust myself if not him? Is it always better to love even if that means loss? Or does the choice to stick and stay mean facing all that I have to fear?

Last night I lie awake and listen to the voices that insist I will be left. Left and lost. The perpetrator may be a man who cannot love or it may be the part of me that cannot be loved. The urgency to decide presses me. My comfort comes from a poem by David Wagoner and from a line from Samuel.

Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
– From Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems

And here is the verse from 1 Samuel 12:16:

“Now then, stand still and see this great thing the Lord is about to do before your eyes!”