My throat feels thick and my vision blurs. The mess and memories come tumbling out of my heart and I want to run. Instead I pour all my energy into the swing. Arial Yoga, better known as Flight School in my little hometown.
The room is hot and thick as muscle and sinew stretch, screaming for the familiar. My muscle memory is forced to do something new I think about how I don’t know who I am and I don’t like the new that surrounds me. On my knees in the rubble and the mess and I found myself in the thick of white space. Like a blank canvas, the old ways of my life gone. The things I was driven to be and do.
To write.
To have a voice.
To have an identity.
And then it happened.
Trauma.
Gut wrenching and helpless, I watched everything I had built with my bare hands come tumbling down. Like the walls of Jericho falling. It’s day seven in my life and I’m standing to the rubble. The dust of what was floats across the canyon of my heart. Words, titles, and failures take flight.
I think back to the moment when I saw the walls splitting and cracking. And I whispered “God, what are you doing?”
He whispered back, “Rescuing you from the life you thought you wanted.”
The instructor calls out another pose and I dive backwards of out my swing, head first to the floor, the hammock tight under my knees as I flip to walk forward on my hands. Sweat hits the floor and it’s time to get back up.
I find myself unable to pull myself back up into my swing. Arching my back, I can’t lift my body heavy with emotional strain. My instructor encourages me. Muscles shaking, I tremble and he can see I can’t will my body to do what it needs.
He puts his hands under my back and lifts me up. And there it is. The moment of clarity. I didn’t know I needed rescued, I didn’t know I couldn’t do what needed to be done. I didn’t know I needed my walls to fall.
If my life before had been a comfortable routine, it was now transformed into a unorthodox way of living. If I were to dig through the files of your life, I’m certain to find a defining life change of your own.
And now you’re life is standing in the mess of day seven. Whether you’re ready or not, here comes trial inducing change. And the desperate question of why.
How can I make room for change when I didn’t want it in the first place?How can I live my life well when it fills foreign spiritual white space? A blank canvas.
My instructor calls out for change as he describes how the next pose pushes our body to make room for new muscle and a capacity to breathe deeper. It breathes life into our veins.
Here’s the thing, make no mistake, God will rescue us from the things that keep us from the life he wants for us. He lifts us up to allow change so we can have his presence and strength like never before. He calls us to something better even if we can’t see it yet. He calls us to change. He calls us to a blank canvas.
And then I think about day seven – the day of change can be devastatingly lovely.