Breathe in

Breathe out

I feel as if that breath is my first full breath

Since the last time I was here

Today is a rainy day at the cottage

It started as a mizzling mist

Now falling too heavily to be outside

No matter

This room filled wall to wall with windows

Overlooking the lake

Makes me feel as if I were in the midst of the storm

Just wrapped in a strange cocoon

Muting the sound

Keeping the water off

The leaves were moving around just a while ago

I could not tell whether it was the wind or droplets of rain

Causing them to dance

But now they are still

Their boughs weighed down with heavy rain

I wonder if the tiny thread of twig

That holds each leaf to the branch

Is made stronger by the wind and waves

The same way the unmoving and steady trunk of the tree

Is made strong?

I come to the cottage

Carrying many weights

I wish it were easier to set them down

The whole world feels full of tears today

As the rain falls

Each drop adding to the blue-grey waters of the lake

Making its surface restless

Joy as elusive as the sun

On a grey and rainy day

Breathe in

This is hard

Breathe out

But he is good

Like a swimmer too exhausted to keep swimming for shore

I feel like I’m going under

But instead I find myself floating

Carried wherever the wind and the waves choose to take me

The quiet of the cottage

Like a balm

The rain washing away

The things I thought would be

Tired muscles letting go of the weight

Of constantly trying to prove my worth

The trap of performance

The utter lie of pleasing people

People can never be pleased

Not really

Today I am just going to breathe

Focus on setting these burdens down

Letting them go

Like Sisyphus watching the boulder roll back down the hill

Only instead of going after it yet again

I am going to sit here awhile and just breathe

Breathing in

And breathing out

This is hard

But He is good