Goodbye Delilah

There are so many people, even some of my oldest friends, who have never known me as fully healed as I am now. You wouldn't think it to look at my physical frame; it's still a mess in some spots, but, on the inside, in my heart, I haven't been this strong since before some of you were born.

I don't know what to credit this recovery with. I suspect a great deal of it is due to my sister's love. A fair share also lies with my father and mother, who, although they died years before, planted the seeds that, though they lay fallow for many years, would somehow, against all odds, sprout in my darkest of days.

Maybe that was the secret. Maybe it was the months of laying in bed, barely able to move, that made this creature sleeping inside me decide that if he was ever to come back out, now is the time.  Maybe Doctor Joseph Campbell was right.  Maybe, I had to spend my time in the belly of the whale before I could continue my hero's journey.

When it first happened, when I first began to emerge emotionally whole again, my family and my doctors were a bit worried that I might be on the upcycle of a manic episode and wanted to make sure I didn't need some medication to keep from swinging the other way. Then they wanted me to make sure I had "someone to talk to" in case this strange recovery was fragile.  I don't think it is fragile.  I've taken some pretty big hits since last May and managed to stand right back up.  

So far, this doesn't seem to be an illusion. So far, I've been able to face the reality of my situation and the challenges ahead without flinching, and have chosen to do it all in a very public way. Allowing everyone to see my scars, no matter how bad they are, may also be a key element here. I think, maybe, it's the hiding of them for so many years that caused the biggest part of the problem.

For many years, hiding the fact that I wasn't the strongest person in the room became quite a burden.  I think maybe it began to break me. Like my father, I believed Mississippi had so many things working against it that it needed a hero, a real hero, and if I couldn't be that, then what good am I? He struggled with that as well. I could only see it a little then, but I see it constantly now. Daddy often strained to break as I did.  I think that's part of what killed him.  Again and again, I put myself between the fire and something I loved, fully believing that if I couldn't, if I didn't, then what good am I?  If I couldn't be the hero, then I am nothing.

Recovering meant accepting that I am sometimes weak, I am sometimes inadequate, and I am sometimes wounded. Admitting that...accepting that... has allowed some of my true, god-touched strengths to come out. Samson had to lose his hair and his eyes for his true strength to come out. Maybe I had to do that too.  There was a Delilah in my life, several actually, and most weren't even human beings, but I allowed them to take my hair and my strength because I didn't know how to use it; things are different now.  

You're gonna get pretty tired of me.  A recovered me works pretty hard and can be relentless at attacking the objective.  My peers may be eyeing a comfortable place to rest after a lifetime of struggle, but I'm looking at places where I can go into the fire and spend my last days fighting.  Whatever I was meant to be all along is finally emerging.  I'm a late bloomer.  It's true, and I do apologize for that, but I think you're going to be impressed by what I can do when it's my turn to stand between the pillars of the temple.  That day is very nearly upon us.