Living A Story You Never Thought You Would Live

It is a Sunday morning. Winter is still here. And after fawning through the forest blanketed in brisk, small snowflakes, I retreat back into my home — the home where quiet daydreams and humble prayers meet me in the most sincere and unforeseen ways.

In these moments, I reminisce. I reminisce about a past that still feels like the present most of the time. And although I am content in this pure and honest season, I am also awed by memories that are true yet still don’t feel like mind to hold.

It is nearly noon and books are scattered across my bedroom floor beneath the windowsill that invites winter to stand her course. Quiet moments like these are some of my truest, for they offer times of sweet, sweet prayer and promise — things I remember yearning to find in the wilderness of my ever-trusting heart.

And yet, I still wonder how I got here. I am living a story I never thought I would live, and I am attempting to learn how best to assume this life I never sought after in the first place.

I try to remember how I became me, but my memories don’t feel like mine most of the time. I am always running around them, as if frightened by their truth, questioning whether they really occurred or are just creations of my ever-fleeting fantasy. And sometimes, I still somehow convince myself, just as he convinced me, that even if I know and lived the truth, it is still most fitting to hide behind it.

I have never wanted to be defined or remembered by the worst thing that has ever happened to me, so these memories soon became distant and fabled. It is almost as if they only rang true in an imagination that no one else was clung to.

And now, after what seems like a lifetime veiling this story with a strength I trust can only come from grace, I am trying to honor it the only way I know how — through words and verse, patience and gentleness.

I may still be healing and mending all that was lost, yet I am also trusting and prayerful for small pieces of this greater story written and crafted by the One who has never lost hold of me.