It is not possible to walk through fire, innocent and exposed, without coming away burned. Life burns us. Yet life blesses us with the flames. I was burned with the loss of Mr. Virgo. I was blessed that it happened in the spring so that each year when his Angelversary comes around, the earth is being reborn and I am given hope. I was burned…as so many of us are. Our hearts ripped from our chests and the only way to breathe was through the gauzy fog of grief. I am blessed that the woman inside me…the one I thought was gone forever…has started peeking her head out and I’m delighted to see her. I missed her terribly! She’s the fun part of me. The playful one. The free one. The earth mother. The sexy, juicy goddess of joy. I’ve missed her and longed for her return. I tried a couple times to hasten her arrival only to be spanked on the hand and told to wait. Wait. Wait. She knew best. She knew she had to stay away till the burns healed into scars. I am changed. I have been transformed. Peeling the layers away with the debridement of my soul has brought me as near to my center as I have ever been. I liken it to having new eyes. This new light is a bit shocking after having spent the last two years in suspended animation.
My memories are being stored in the Cloud. I had pictures on my phone of Mr. Virgo in his casket. I stayed inside myself, gripping the phone in desperation, wanting one last connection with the man who had carried my heart on a velvet pillow. Looking at that picture of him, lying so still in his best ivory sweater, his stunning silver hair resting on white satin, was the only thing I could do to cry. I had to open my own chest and debride my heart. I knew instinctively it was the only path to healing. As time went on, I didn’t need to see the picture so much. Interestingly, just in the last couple of weeks, I went back in the archives of my phone to look for it and…it’s gone. It has gone to the Cloud and I can’t get it back. And you know what? That’s ok. I don’t need to visit that anymore. I am rising from the ashes. I will face tomorrow as I have everyday the last year…with strength, courage, hope, and grace. And I will celebrate a wonderful man who I was so fortunate to call my own.
❤
“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
1 Peter 1:6-7