Secret Garden

I've become acutely aware that the 10 year anniversary of my accident is approaching. My mom hates that I remember it, but I do. Every single day. And as February 17th creeps closer, so does this sense of panic. I specifically recall tell God I had to be okay because I had work to do here, still. Right now I impatiently wait for that feeling of any sort of accomplishment, of validation that I remained here and okay for a reason. I keep struggling with this idea of be patient. I wish I had the ability to trust more. To feel certainty in surrendering control to a power more knowledgeable than myself. Its always the same issue.

Usually I'm waiting on money. Right now, financially I am set. And then when I think money is the answer...I'm faced with needing my car to be shipped and having to wait and rely on someone other than myself to get it done. I wish I could explain what it does to me to have to need other people. It enrages me. I feel useless, helpless, powerless, defeated, weak, and most of all vulnerable.

As if it weren't enough, last week I started fighting against this "Ick" my body felt. And this morning, no car and feverish I ask the universe: in how many ways do you need me to feel like shit?

And I get it. My word for the year is surrender. Yet, I never meant surrendering control or surrendering to someone else's timing. God doesn't seem to care about my interpretation of the word, God just cares that I do it. Why is it so hard? 

I think about what it means to me that I am not vulnerable. It means that I am capable, strong, intelligent, and put together. There is an element of disheveled that I associate with vulnerable. Not being put together is among my tip 5 pet peeves. I guess my big work is to understand these things are not opposites and that vulnerable does not mean weak, or incapable, or powerless.

The things that I keep in the garden...that's the stuff, I suppose, that is at the crux of this. I've built walls around my heart because I know where I've been after it broke and I never want to go back there. But what I never realized was that in trying to stay so strong, I've made anything that threatens vulnerability a weapon against me. Whereas, if I were open to it then it would not be so threatening.

But the truth is, I don't want my heart broken again. It nearly killed me the first time. And I suppose it wasn't just the devastatingly swift blow of rejecting, but also unhappiness, and the grief of my own expectations. I was a widow of many husbands. But one thing is certain--I can't keep up this fight. Did it take me 10 years after begging to live to begin doing so?