Doorway

I am stepping through a threshold-- just bits of me making their way into the light. I let it warm me in small doses. Seems all the hold back is me. But if you could see my journey through time lapse photography, you'd see I am making my way through. I let the light touch the less threatened parts of me first--like my limbs, that I can retract in an instant if it starts to burn.

So far the light is up to my right elbow and part of my left foot. My eyes are clenched tight, but there is the promise of warmth enough for all of me. My eyes may remain closed when I finally feel brave enough to put my face through, but for the moment it will be enough to see my eyelids lit up.

With the touch of warmth--there is no question at what is out there waiting for me to receive it.

Gently, I go.

Let me tell you what up to my elbow and part of one foot in the door has given me.

Another perspective, another angle with which to view my pain.

Since I could remember, I've looked for many ways to name my pain, but little did I know that naming the pain, was also naming God.

What do I mean by this?

Bear with me, here. This may or may not be the most important thing I've learned, but I am toddling in my understanding of it.

Here it goes:

A man entered my life in a flash, and exited just as quickly. He left in his wake a deep longing, such as I've never experienced.

I named my pain after this man.

But this story begins in those moments when I stopped running from the pain, and just let it overtake me.

I let myself feel the many facets of the searing of it into my being--the joy life could contain, but surely wouldn't, the burn of a scarlet letter across my chest, the silence that brushed up against an ancient pain, deep and raw and eternal. The bottom dropping out as Death dangled his only offering through and almost through.

But would you believe that this was a resuscitation of sorts?

Wouldn't you know that this pain has been singled out by this man, but I have found this same pattern to exist across every stretch of my highway. There is no outrunning it, as it is always right underfoot.

Only the pain didn't flatten me like I thought it would. Instead, it warmed me. It touched me. It waited patiently for me to stop writhing. It became the soil. It opened me.

It awoke sleeping angels within.

It was as if allowing myself to fully face the pain allowed me to hear the voice underneath it. And you know, it wasn't a demonic voice saying I told you so, you unholy abomination!

It was a gentle voice. It was a voice of clarity. It met me where I was, gently nudging me toward understanding that it has always been only a lie that has kept me sad and scared and dying.

And this is what I began to hear, only ever so faintly at first, but then a little louder and a little clearer, day by day, minute by minute, second by second:

This is your doorway. Make your way through it and you will see the perfection, how this experience of light and dark was for you, how it has heralded your expansion, your awakening, your leap of faith. And when you taste this knowledge, you will never be hungry again.

Only after you'd held the light in your hands and lost it, would you know that light even existed. Only then would you begin to lift your gaze upward--only then would you begin to wonder what the light would reveal.

If you could know that your Soul named this pain God,

because nothing in your experience could have so amply mimicked the vast chasm within you, a separation so deep and convincing as to keep you standing at the edge of a precipice, knowing that across a dark abyss was a kind of existence so unreachable that you'd long stopped looking for any way to cross.

Only a light this great would give you the desire to move, to follow a path of possibility, to want to take back the light, because to take back the light would be to merge with the oneness, to become a rightful heir.

And once you knew the light was there, you couldn't let go of searching for it again. And, in this: rebirth.

For something was big enough to bring you to your feet, to help you take the first precarious step over the edge. No more sitting for an eternity in darkness.

And hasn't the ripping and the tearing held within it all the fire, all the momentum, the momentousness?

And this is only up to your elbow.

So, now when his face feels alight in my awareness, sometimes in the wee hours of the night, teasingly tangible, and clearer than memory should warrant, it is a comfort, as the pain feels like a reminder, like a return, a reckoning, a homecoming. Still ground to cover, but with the mighty force of a heart, resurrected.

And all I want is to give this fire to anyone and everyone who sits in darkness, long having given up on the existence of light.