grace

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” ― Mary Oliver

This week was overwhelming. I learned a lot this week, about high school things like chemistry and english, and about other things too, like love, and where my identity is, and grace.
While I got good news from my doctors earlier this week, there's something bittersweet about the whole thing. It's good and it's happy and I'm happy, but it's also scary and sad and full of so much emotion I can't even describe. I am overwhelmed by grace, because I really deserve none of this. I feel like I'm standing on something that is changing. The ground beneath me is shaking, and the world is spinning and it's hard to stay upright. Change is taking place here, something big, I can feel it. I'm excited, but it's hard too.
This week was the salty sweet kind. Days would come and I would end up crying in front of the TV or as I wrote something on my computer or as I sat in a chair after getting up in the morning. It's overwhelming and I can barely take it all in. I considered hibernation, curling up in a cave and sleeping until I figured out what to do with this beautiful mess I call life. I spend one moment falling apart and the rest of the day piecing myself back together. Slowly, piece by piece, I gather up my broken courage and muster up a timid roar. As it turns out I'm not feeling so brave or fearless these days, just sad. It's not a bad kind of sadness either, just a kind of sadness that takes time.
And so this is it. I must learn how to sit with this space in my head and in my soul. I must learn how to respond to this unending grace in the only way I know how - with unending gratitude. I must learn how to stand on my own two feet and find my courage again when everything is shifting around me and I feel so unstable in where I stand in and in who I am.
But I am keeping this list of tiny blessings, my grateful response to this amazing grace that has been showered upon me. And while the good things don't necessarily cancel out the bad, the bad too, I am learning, is a gift.

158. Dr.M
159. Eating at the Olive Garden

162. Stable


169. Heels that click when I walk

172. Overwhelming grace
173. PJ day
174. Laughter
175. Understanding
176. Hot Bubble baths
177. Accomplishment
178. Grey's Anatomy nights
179. space
180. frog socks

183. aha! moments
184. The reminder that I am enough today

186. Bowling
187. Friends
188. A day spent in town with my mama
189. discovery
190. finally catching up on some school'
191. blonde
192. love
193. Kendall's blog post
194. Friday