The deconstruction opens walls to create windows where light is invited in.
____________________
Have you ever paid attention to how you digest?
Or laid both hands out in front of you to study the veins?
Have you ever marveled that your feet carry your steps?
Or stretched out flat on the floor and studied your breath?
The sweet gifts are as abundant as what has fallen away.
Noticing everything is at the top of the list.
I take stock in the darkness when my heart sees best.
What craves my attention is distraction to the work of the soul.
In my head I regard these diversions. Then eliminate.
I notice that what haunts me are the concerns of others I have never met:
A world enduring its own cycle of disappointment, anger, regret.
Have you ever inventoried the things that make your life hard?
Have you teased out what burdens are…and are not yours?
Caring and carrying are not the same thing.
Then comes the weight that overtakes you, seemingly without cause.
It’s heavy. And unfamiliar. And yours alone.
Prior to this season, the hardest I had been through was living in and through the punishing restoration of my homes. I willingly entered it. Like an invitation to the finest gathering, I eagerly embraced the overwhelm to come—
The sacrifice of fingers and breath.
The brutality of running out of yourself.
The wrangling of a wild thing, its limits unknown—
The necessary tearing down of so many rotted pieces of the past.
Until now, the hardest was the unending debris,
the belief that it would never be put back together,
the doubt that it would ever be beautiful again.
Until now, I have written mostly of the restoration.
Rarely of the deconstruction that restoration requires.
I haven’t invited you into the mess. I am not certain I feel able to do that now.
But it’s important to acknowledge the mess is there.
The difference is it doesn’t own me like it used to. Doesn’t consume the innermost parts of who I am.
But it absolutely prepared me for the dismantling in me now.
What would you not endeavor if you knew the way would be hard?
Let me ask another way:
What are you willing to deconstruct to uncover new life?
I am spread out under billowing blankets laid over softest sheets.
An obese cat lays across my shin and a fat Bible is open on my lap.
Two things I yearn for more than the winding streets of Paris.
Simple. Uncomplicated. Gratefulness.
This is the unexpected adventure I am living.
Just as the abandoned spaces I once brought to life, this season holds its own quiet.
Yet I see the potential in it—
Pieces of a past life, like delicate wallpaper tearing away.
Under it, layers of beauty withstanding decay.
A structural sturdiness undergirding every new day.
When as hard as it gets visits, the losses make room for something gained.
The restoration has shifted from exterior places to rooms within me—
Spaces aching to become more ethereal. Less concrete.
This time, there are no walls between me and the work.
Still, it is work all the same.
But I have witnessed what comes after.
I have lived the imagination and determination required to get there.
What hard thing have you avoided for fear of it?
Do you imagine even the best of you is not capable to endure?
Here’s the best “what if” I have ever asked—
What if you haven’t [yet] met the best of you?
What if “that you” is waiting for the moment that requires something you have never been before?
Until now, my hard as it gets days have been chosen.
The chosen ones readied me for the one that caught me a little off guard.
Maybe I didn’t see this coming. But I haven’t lived a single day of wondering who I am in what is.
NOTES
SOUL MAP
the inventory → what belongs → what doesn't → the chosen hard → the uninvited hard → deconstruction → what remains → possibility → identity → HERE
I stood in the middle of that room five years ago, imagining what I might build.
I could not have imagined all that would be dismantled in the years that followed.
A scarf covering a bald head. My beloved Great Dane beside me, now gone. Exposed beams, unfinished walls, and the remnants of what had once been.
I remember standing there, studying the possibilities. I had willingly taken the room apart, confident that something beautiful could be built from what remained.
What I didn't know was how much of my own life would be deconstructed in the years ahead. How many losses would accumulate. How much I would be asked to release.
Looking at this photograph now, I see a woman who had already endured much, yet could not have anticipated what was still to come.
But I recognize her.
She is looking toward what might be, rather than what has been lost.
And six years later, she still is.
REFLECTION
There are hard things we choose. Hard things we inherit. And hard things we carry simply because we have allowed them to take up residence in our thoughts.
Not every burden that occupies us belongs to us.
And not every difficult thing that belongs to us has the authority to determine who we are.
Perhaps begin where the essay began—with an inventory.
Have you teased out what burdens are, and are not, yours?
Consider the concerns that follow you into the quiet hours. The troubles of people you love. The suffering of people you have never met. The uncertainty of a world you cannot control.
Which of these asks for your compassion? Which genuinely requires your attention or action? And which have you mistaken for a personal responsibility simply because you cannot stop thinking about them?
There is a difference between caring and carrying.
Then consider the hard things you have chosen.
What would you not endeavor if you knew the way would be hard?
Is there something you have long wanted to begin, repair, or change, but have resisted because you can already imagine the difficulty?
What might be worth the disruption?
And what about the hard that came without your permission?
The circumstances you could not have anticipated. The losses you could not prevent. The life you were required to live without having chosen its terms.
What are you willing to deconstruct to uncover new life?
Perhaps there are expectations that no longer serve you. Responsibilities you were never meant to assume. Old understandings of yourself that cannot accommodate who you are today.
What deserves to remain?
What can be released?
And what have you discovered beneath the layers that has been sturdy all along?
Finally, return to the question I consider the heart of this week's Journal.
What if you haven't yet met the best of you?
Not a more accomplished or admirable version. Not someone who has mastered suffering or learned to endure without complaint.
But someone whose courage, tenderness, discernment, or faith has not yet been fully called upon.
What has this season asked of you that no other season has?
And what have you discovered about yourself that you could not have known any other way?
DROP YOUR PINS
what occupies me → what belongs to me → what I can release → what I choose → what I must face → what remains → HERE
Or perhaps your path begins with something you never would have chosen.
the unexpected → the loss → the dismantling → the hidden strength → the opening → the light → HERE
Or perhaps yours begins somewhere else.
_____ → _____ → _____ → _____ → _____ → _____ → HERE
YOU ARE HERE.