Beautiful

Pardon the veering off from the mentally healthy thing...I need a creative moment.

I've got Daughtry pounding through my head phones and I feel the need to simply expound from the outside, heart-side up, rather than the intellectual stuff I've been pontificating about. One thing I learned by pursing all the psychology education was that a total disconnect from my imagination is a deadly thing. I end up in so many pieces, dead leaves, laying around in the space of my life. So...for balance.

I am looking to keep up on the rubble accumulating inside. The thing is that no matter how much information I put into my brain, I still have to have meaning. I've met many who do not need that link. I do. Maybe it is that mental illness has simply knocked down the walls that separate all the colors of my life until they simply swirl around in a dark chasm.

I have changed so much in the past six years. I hardly recognize myself sometimes. The changes are much good of bad. But as I mentioned to my cousin earlier, shining moments are so important. I love it when I shine. I'll take shining of simple pleasantness any day...but what goes up must come down. Ah, the paradox. I am destined to forever be tied to extremes. God directs me to balance, but lately I'm thinking maybe He applauds some of the extreme in me. I can work with that.

I am happy to know who I am. And when I find myself turning away from the flaws and dark shadows I never seem to shake, I know it is time for little diatribes like this one. I once asked God what He calls me...what my name is. He told me He calls me beautiful. Wow. At a time when I was the ugliest I had ever been, failed in every circuit, and a world disaster, He said I was beautiful. One might say hearing such a thing is virtually impossible...no...believing it is.

I am not a product of my generation, friends, family, or even that man whom I love better than myself. I am a product of God's grace moving in my life, fluid and electric...shocking me into the reality that I am all things in Him, rainbow and light in His shelter, dark and night outside of it.

We talk of blessings from God as though they are small parcels of choice meat dropped off with a card and no return address. Today God touched me in a gentle caress, paving the way through my panicked mind and heart, afraid of having been forgotten on the grand scale of things. He, forgave my absentmindedness at having lost my wallet and all that identifies me as me. He put the people in my life who were prepared to make a difference in my life, and then He went a step further, giving me laughter as the ribbon on the package. He then admonished me to forgive myself for my humanness....grace...flowing in and around me causing such peace and relief tears could only express reciprocation for such a tender love for me. No one loves me like He does.

It is a scary thing to lose identity in the world that requires it in the smallest of places and experiences. To know you are in fact in existence but unable to prove it is a very humbling thing. I have learned so much from this experience. How ironic. I go to Phoenix to be with all these intellectuals, which was wonderful, but the lesson I learned most and biggest was the one about how much I strength I posses in spite of mental fracture, God's guidance in spite of my railing, and my John's wonderful and enduring love for me that sustained me (by God's direction, I'm certain) in just the way I needed, loving me no matter how neurotic I became (and I can DO neurotic).

So, may I not forget who I am, no matter what I posses to identify me...challenged, smart, neurotic, emphatic, eloquent, opinionated, questioning, weak, broken, deep, in love, loved, perfectionistic, obtuse, stubborn, reclusive, empathetic, fragile....beautiful. My name is Beautiful...