The first year it felt like freedom.

It tasted like sunshine and sky.

 

 

Lost Valley Ranch.

A week uninterrupted by the regular.

It was like breathing again after being held underwater just to the tip of suffocation,

rubbing against the sharp edge of death,

a Coming Up For Air.

It had been a hard year and a half of loss and shift and pain and betrayal and brutal reclaiming of life.

At the ranch I felt a coming clean, a washing off, a shaking down.

I felt like someone I wanted to maybe get to know,

like someone with a chance.

I felt okay – and that I would get to be okay.

 

 

I was even given this vision (though it sort of makes me nervous to say so) that there would be a house.

A house in my future.

A Revel House.

Where my family would welcome people, people who needed to breathe again too.

This Revel House.

(Revel – To Take Great Delight In.)

 

 

The second year, (I could hardly believe there was such a thing), I felt strong.

Hopeful.
Alive.
Happy.
(Almost recklessly so.)
Kind of giddy.

I felt like I could jump and run and Do Things.

Like not only could I make it, but that I could thrive.

I felt less inhibited,
less held back,
not so timid,
not so breathing into a paper bag.

Triumphant.

 

 

My dad was with me and he made me feel empowered,

like I mattered,

because he acts like I can do anything.

I climbed Sheep’s Rock before breakfast and I branded cows and I felt like the air was for me.

 

 

I didn’t feel like a stranger.

I felt like family.

And there was a vision that year too.

The scariest one yet.

A vision of Hope.

Of wanting to be loved and thinking maybe (possibly) that I could be loved in return,
that I wanted to be loved.  (Just the idea, friends, not the reality.  In case any of you, like my dad, are reading between the lines here.  There are NO lines to read between.  I’ll just be clear with you on that point.)

 

 

That perhaps people who love Jesus,

specifically a man who loves Jesus faithfully, could actually exist and I could maybe one day meet such a person.

So what is in store for this year?  Year Three.  (It’s astounding that we get a Year Three.)

Sincerely, I did not approach either year with expectation.  Nor with assumption.

Just with open hands and eagerness.

To be fair, nothing has been fulfilled from the first two years and the big ideas.  There is no Revel House.  There is no love relationship.  (In fact, truthfully, I am a far cry from either of those.)

And that’s alright.  There is hope, however.  In place of what had been.

 

 

This summer I’d like to find that there’s

less self-pity,
less talking down to myself.

Less believing in the lies that I have been told.

Lies that tell me

I’m not good enough.
I’m easy to leave.
I’m not worth fighting for.

 

 

I’m anxious to breathe deeply again.  To walk down the dirt roads as the sun sets and to laugh loudly at whatever I think is funny and to climb to the top of Sheep’s Rock again – this year Bergen wants to rise early and conquer the mountain with me.  I’ve already got plans to take the breakfast ride because I’ve yet to eat scrambled eggs and bacon on a giant rock in the Pike National Forest.

I don’t know what we’ll see or do or how I’ll feel this year.  I don’t know what little pearl will slide itself into my life and shine with its simple beauty back in my home state upon our return.

But I’m eager to find out.

 

 

___________________________________