What will I say about this time in my life? What will I tell my kids about how I met their mother and of the relationships before? How this foreign land carved the flesh off of my bones and laid my innards bare? How I fought and how I lost and how I loved? What will I say?
What will the stories say about how I came to this land? How I thought I really knew who I was and how life proved me wrong and I was humbled and laid low. How a man so confident in many ways was discovered to be timid when it mattered. How a fighter lost so many times that he grew pessimistic, bitter, and untrusting.
Will they tell how, carved to the bones and innards laid bare, I was resurrected? How the muscle and sinew we carefully handled. Stroked and smoothed. How with loving hands each tendon was placed right where it should be – not where it was before, but where it should be, where it was designed to be.
And how the fighter found someone to believe in him and he managed to land a punch and win the fight.
And how the timidness was revealed to be fear and that the fear was driven out?
How a bent, beat, broken man became whole and well?
Will the history tell that here, in this place, I was redeemed?
“this land”
I was thinking today about all the places I’ve been over the past four years, and was musing about how it really wasn’t that big of a jump from where I came from, geographically, even socially. Yet, I’ve traveled worlds over those four years. None of those places really represent the internal maps I’ve worn to pieces, used. Yet each memory is intricately linked to a web of emotions, images, buildings, faces… stories. Ah… this land has raised me, laid me low, changed me, and washed away layers to reveal glimpses of a core.
Peace to you, Andrew. And your known/unknown path.