My Lenten Journey: Hello from the bottom of the well and other places dark and stormy

For a few weeks I have been living from the bottom of the well. Dark and cold and way way down.

Being at the bottom of the well is not a new experience... I've been here before. Been there before. Maybe I am feeling some kind of way because Spring hasn't fully arrived. Or all the upheaval change going on in my life. Or the gaping aloneness that is crippling and I can't seem to remedy. I just know I am in the thick of it during this contemplative Lenten season. Although I must say I don't feel very contemplative. I feel very hollow. Very much adrift. Not a new feeling. I've been adrift before. Yup.

What I know to do, is just keep moving forward. Even in the pitch blackness of any day... I just move forward... Move through... Move.

I take that to mean that love is still the only true revolution...Of self and country. I possess a great capacity for love; it is stunning the depths of it. The height of it and breadth of it. And yet, I am a woman not in love... Well, if you don't count being in love with the world.

I've been at this life a long time now, I am not easily broken. I do however get very tired, and in that tiredness I lose sight of God's grace. God is at the bottom of the well with me. I know this now, as I have known this before. Wherever I am, so is God... Expansive and grand and deliberate. How can I forget this? Well, when you are free falling backwards down the well, God is not the first thought believe it or not. It's not just the bottom of the well. It's an empty king-sized bed, or attending galas unattached, or activities on your own all the time.  It is the end of a day and no one there to say hey, I did this... Or that...  It is the kind of aloneness that feels like a crushing punishment. And You are acutely aware of time running past you. It's knowing that "happily-ever-after" is not for you.

Hello from the bottom of the well and other places dark and stormy... Where is the light?

I know where the light is. The light is brightest in the faces of my friends who tend to me. It is the sound of laughter from my children unaware of my pain. It is the work I do on behalf of (insert cause and or organization). I have to keep lighting the candle myself. I am responsible for the light inside of me. I am responsible for my life on earth in God's care.

Standing in the bottom of the well, all I have to do is look up. Just look up.