the fire in my bones

I don't want to retract yesterday's blog post- because it's honest, and I will never apologize for honesty. But honesty without context isn't always truth.

Here is the truth.

I am generally happy, joyful and content. Sure, there are days and moments when I get caught up in the monotony of my days, or frustrated with my temper tantrum throwing strong-willed toddler. Some days I'm overwhelmed, some days I'm busy, some days I'm grieving, most days I am a little bored. But I am fundamentally content, and relieved that it is spring.

This winter was hard, but it was not without hope.

But here is my problem: sometimes I get stuck at hope. Because I am hoping for something more and I'm just not sure exactly what that is. And so I never get much beyond hoping.

Every day I am grateful for the abundance of blessing in my life, and many days this gratitude translates into peace. But under it all, always, under it all, is restlessness.

It's this essay by Shauna Niequist - putting into words something I have been thinking about lately and striking a chord of truth deep within. It's the call to freedom and courage by Glennon Doyle Melton in Carry On, Warrior - that's resonating in the very depths of my being. It's the words said to me many years ago by a woman I greatly admire, that I have fire in my bones. And the words of my friend who caught me off guard completely when she called me an artist. It's all this and so much more, swirling around and around. Restlessness, longing, dreaming, hoping. Trying to figure out what it means, how to let the fire that is within, out.

And I think about this, incessantly. About who I really am, who I want to be, what I want to do. Who God created me to be. I have wonder-filled glimpses of my destiny, and then sit on the couch and watch Days of our Lives.

I allow melancholy to win.

So it's not that I'm sad and depressed and can't get the laundry done (although that happens, too). This is not that season.

This is a season that's filled with excitement as I feel my soul stir. And it's a season that is filled with frustration at feeling so stuck.

I had high hopes that after a circumstantially difficult winter that I would emerge renewed and refreshed this spring, ready to really live. 

And that is the source of my frustration and the context to yesterday's words.

I'm not making excuses, eating my words or changing my story, but I am amending them.

It's not so much that I've been slow to thaw. It's that I don't just want to be un-frozen. It's that I want to find a way to be on fire.