Reimagined? Or the Original?

A battle.  A heart recovered. And the re-integration of the broken parts allows a new version of ourselves to emerge.  Which may turn out to be the original.  

Music by Scott Holmes - A Wee Tipple 
Non Copyright Music 

Transcript

Speaker 0:08

This morning I woke up long before it was time. I walked outside and sat on my front steps in the dark, something I've done many times over the past three years. The night air was cool against my skin, and the moonlight turned the blacktop on the road a white that almost glowed. The crickets and katy dids and cicadas were still filling the air with their chorus that was so familiar in August. This night certainly was not quiet. The trees cast their shadows in the moonlight, and I remembered how often these very steps in the night air held me as I struggled, wrecked with grief and near panic at times, wondering how in the world I would go on, while knowing somehow I just had to. And here I was, having gone on, and the night had become so familiar. And as I sat there, the words from the song This is Me, from the reimagined mix, quietly came to me from within. I'm not a stranger to the dark. Hide away, they say, because we don't want your broken parts. That song had been sent to me several years ago, at a time when I was in the middle of an epic battle. I was in a fight that would either take me down entirely or recover what had been lost, my strength and my confidence that had unknowingly slowly eroded over a couple of decades. I could not have seen that at the time. It was just a really hard time, and I was facing a difficult situation that I was finding impossible to solve. At least not in the usual way I solved things. In looking back, and with the little I know now, I would say that it is likely this was a last-stitch effort by life to restore many things. My heart, my voice, and my sense of worth and capability. I sat there in the night air thinking about all of it, and after some time went inside and fell asleep. A few hours later, just as I was beginning to wake, but long before my eyes were ready to open, those words were playing their melody within me. I'm not a stranger to the dark. Hide away, they say, because we don't want your broken parts. Those words continue to play with such an insistence today. I knew I was meant to write. And so I sat on the porch with my cup of coffee close at hand. What I think is that, just like me, there are others who find themselves in the middle of an epic battle of sorts. Those common life situations we hope will pass. We just need to tough it out somehow. But I'm wondering if we look a little closer, would we realize this might be one of life's rescue missions, intent on the recovery of our hearts? What if we were so loved, so looked out for, that we were fiercely fought for by the heavens? That who we are at the core level is worth the deployment of heavenly forces, and that strategies beyond what we would ever expect are used with a goal of our freedom. It's not a fight that pits us against another. And if I'm so focused on a specific outcome, I might not recognize good outcomes that fall outside of my current understanding, my current perspective of what is good. There is more than one good outcome, more than one way for endings to lead to new and good beginnings, but certainly not without suffering, not without loss, but still good and new. I'm not a stranger to the dark. Hide away, they say, 'cause we don't want your broken parts. Those words also remind me how we so often learn to hide away the parts of us that make others angry and upset, and do not gain acceptance or love. Because they cause disruption in some way, we believe at a young age those parts are broken, and so we hide them in the dark. We put them away, trying not to be them, adapting ways of how to live around them. But at some point, if you're like me, those parts are exposed somehow, and we face the fury of others for having disrupted something they held dear, some way of seeing things, an expectation or a way of life, so to speak. And once again, we face the messages we received so many years ago when growing up, sharp words meant to cut us down, telling us again how we are unacceptable. Maybe we talk too much or aren't pretty enough. Maybe we felt too much or weren't tough enough. Maybe our ability to see and speak intimidated those around us. Maybe we were told to get it together, but there's no time for imperfections or inconveniencing others. And so what do we do with this second chance? Try and find better ways to hide what others find unacceptable? Or begin to accept ourselves in deeper ways than ever before, fully integrating every single last part of ourselves, which by the way, ironically leads us to wholeness. The title of the song makes me smile. This is me, the reimagined mix. Yeah. Me, you, us, reimagined. Where does the part of me that disrupts fit? How does that fit into the world, into relationships? One thing I do know is that there are things in life that need disrupted, such as egos, ways of relating, how we control, how we prioritize and operate in the world, even how we see ourselves. And where does the messy part of me fit? What purpose does it serve in life, in my relationships, in the lives of others? The messy part of me often serves as a mirror to others. If they have not accepted their own mess, they will judge mine and refuse to love me there. And their refusal to love me can indicate several things and leaves me with decisions to make. They all hold some goodness in them. It was the lack of love or someone's interpretation that twisted them into something, and learning to love them, accepting them, even when others do not, allows the new version of us to emerge, the reimagined mix. And maybe we will find that ourselves reimagined actually turns out to be the original.