| Handle gently | Turn carefully | Watch closely | Keep warm | Trust the process | Wait |
Thus has been my 2010.
If I had a photo of a flaming furnace, I might have used that instead. And I still might. Because it’s been that too. But this picture seems to work—in a different, but still true, way.
This year has been like an (old, clanky, claustrophobic) incubator that my life got shoved into without my permission.
I kicked and screamed.
I begged and pleaded.
I cried and cried and cried.
But for some reason, crazy or not, I stayed in it.
Not because I’m strong.
Just the opposite.
It might be nothing more than that I simply needed to feel warm.
I probably shouldn’t make many big, sweeping statements about this past year, because I’m still so in it, but—other than the fact that it has sucked on many, many, many levels—I think that maybe, just maybe, something is… changing.
Starting to grow.
Transform.
[Develop slowly without outward or perceptible signs.]
Break free.
While that may sound all quaint and lovely, let’s just remember. This whole new-birth process is pretty much the hardest, most exhausting, most fragile, most messy thing around. And sometimes the most excruciating. Also quite clumsy.
And it’s not over yet. So you might want to stand back.
Because, for now, for this moment at least, I’m staying in it. I’m choosing to believe that some sort of life can grow here. Is growing. In this incubator of my life.
And if nothing good ever comes from all this, at least I might be a little warmer, for a little longer.
by julie rybarczyk
photo taken at Secondhand Rose in Buffalo, MN
