Paula Moldenhauer
Processing

There are deep places I don’t know how to process my way out of. Or if I even should.

Longing. Uncovering. Unveiling. Questioning.

The seemingly unrelated intertwine, vines growing in and out of each other, connected inside of me in some kind of whimsical garden where fruit trees grow over tomato plants and pumpkin vines wrap themselves around rose bushes and potatoes sprout underneath the daisies. Everything blooms and produces at once, whether in season or out.

Longing  – for  much. To create. To embrace. To enter.

Beauty, writing, twinkle lights, family, weighty words, advent flame, laughter, celebration, magical and spiritual, a slow dance and a jig.

Joy.

How can depth come from jigging or jigging from plumbing the depths? And how do the seasonal rhythms I  crave relate to thanksgiving, creating, relationship .  . . God?

What are words–their place within me and without? And how is joy cotton candy and meat and potatoes. Short magical romance and long soul-digging?

Being seventeen in a snap of the fingers, embracing pumpkin pie aroma when life grows hard, seeing the good where others criticize. Rose colored glasses? Impossible? Judged. And yet desiring more, not less.

Entering into the moment. Creating the moment. Embracing the moment. Believing in the moment.

Vulnerable and child-like. Rolling eyes ridiculed. Lauded and applauded. Strength in soft flannel baby blanket.

Not Pollyanna, but not beyond liking her.

Miracle on 32nd Street silly.

Departures deep.

Both. Not either/or.

Stretching means embracing what others judge fluffy meaningless. And yet stretching also encompasses the deep places other dare not tread. and stretching means believing where others can’t.

And in all things, where are the words? Do I trust them to germinate, to take root, to grow into an oak even as they pop up  in crazy Dandelion yellow, determined little things, white daisies and bluets and Virginia Spring Beauties? Both platypus and regal lioness, tiny fish-tank turtle and mighty grey elephant? Dancing kitten and elegant giraffe?

Faith. All this joy-seeking, word-growing, rhythm-searching returns there.

Of course.

Letting go of confusion, ego, questions. Holding longing loosely, lifting to Hands wiser than my own, while allowing the tears to beg for their place, for understanding and release, for fulfillment. And yet knowing some ache is only treated in glory. Letting it stand. Without giving up.

Trust.

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