“It’s times like these we learn to live again.” – foo fighters

Ever wonder what it would be like to have been in a flood? Like on Noah’s Ark? Where the rain came and flooded the land for 40 days and nights, wiping everything away except for the few souls that occupied this large, massive boat like structure? I do.

I was sitting on the picnic table last night while the thunder roared and the lightning speared through the hovering darkness that consumed the skies above the valley. The rain pounded down…first single drop by single drop before the clouds exploded and it felt like I was sitting beneath a waterfall. So quickly, unexpected it came and washed all the dirt away.

So, ever the thinker I am, I have decided this is the metaphor to our lives. There is so much that we need, and desire to wash away. I know that it is true for me. I wonder sometimes if the things I wish could leave me will ever go away; if the things I am working on about myself will ever, finally, be fixed. Sometimes, I wish that my past would quit haunting me the way the thunder seems to haunt the crevasses of the hills and trees. It always feels as if there is a storm brewing because of what was, what used to be, what previously compiled, the soul of who I am. I have become an advocate for change but I am confused why when things change, it is so difficult to explain (and ultimately prove) this change to other people. It is so easy to hide from the rain when I am alone in my room or a cubicle in the library or on my own. In other words, there is nothing to prove when it’s just me and God. Spreading his fulfillment of my life into anothers is difficult. People are full of questions…about the validity of your change or the truth behind your voice. Mainly because they know who you were. Who I was.

When you weren’t proud of the person you were, but are proud of the person you are and have become…and keep striving to be, I’ve heard that that is enough. But what when you can’t seem to escape who you used to be… then that hostility from the past dampens your efforts sometimes. I am just about decided that I am going to Victoria in September and I am terrified. Not for school or moving or leaving things behind, that I am used to. It’s what I am returning to. Save for two of my best friends, all the girls I grew up knowing and loving and being friends with all live in Victoria. All of them. And although I don’t plan to live with them, I am scared for who I was when I knew them and was consistently around them. So much has changed, my heart, my mind, my ambitions and drives… what I think is fun. I wish that the rain could come in such a volume that the old me would be completely wiped away in their minds, aside from the distant memories of our lives together, so that if and when I come, I can stand before them… and say “Here it is, here I am, I am new. I love you in a different, deeper way. I feel for you and wonder for you and support you… just as I may have before. But I left a long time ago. I want you to accept that it may not make sense or that I have shortcomings I am now willing to admit. But I am still me, a little more sure of herself and a lot more focuses. And all the more vulnerable. The things I’ve done, I did, but they don’t define me now. I can’t drink that much or stumble too far or think that’s as funny or hide when you hurt me. ‘I am who I am. No excuses.’”… But I don’t think the rain could take it all away… but the creator who made it can.

Ever wonder what it would be like to be in a flood? I think it is a testament to our lives that the rain and thunder and lightning hold a far deeper purpose than nourishment for the world. It serves as a reminder that even in the darkest storms and the fiercest winds, the stars will find a way to peek through and the horizon will have a sun, rising from the darkness. All in a promise of hope. A promise of change. And a promise that after every storm there is a lesson to be learned and a foundation stripped of all that dirtied it before. I want it all to be washed away. Do you?

“And once you lose yourself, you have two choices: find the person you used to be… or lose that person completely. Because, sometimes, you have to step outside of the person you’ve been. And remember the person you were meant to be. The person you wanted to be. The person you are.” – One Tree Hill