CAREFUL, CAREFUL:

*After six weeks of illness with COVID, pneumonia, sepsis protocol, three ER visits and one four-day hospitalization, I have finally turned the corner. My lungs are struggling, but they are improving. The treatments I have been receiving for over six years, now, simply to prevent the need for a lung transplant, have been postponed since May 4th. Because, according to my pulmonologist, my immune system is currently “kaput,” I won’t be able to get a treatment for at least two more weeks. I need one badly, but my body is just too weak right now. Nevertheless, I am getting better and I am so very grateful for all your love and prayers. I love you so much.

Below, I am sharing something prompted by an assignment from my Creative Writing Class at Wake Tech. I was instructed to extend an invitation to someplace special in my life. What follows is my invitation. I hope it blesses you.

🌾 If this speaks to you in any way, I’d love for you to feel free to share it. In the behemoth that is Facebook, it is a small way you can help my page, by influencing the algorithm, and helping get the words God gives me to those who might need encouragement.

I am so happy to be back to writing.

𝐖𝐀𝐃𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐒𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐋𝐘:

I have had many special places and experiences in my life.

Steady, safe, and secure, I enjoyed them without a thought.

Their magic was wasted on me because I forgot, or had not yet learned, the transient nature of things. How, in the words of Frost, “Nothing gold can stay.”

I was untouched by tragedy for so long, that I never took the time to appreciate what I was blessed to enjoy.

I was too busy basking to be aware.

Then, without warning, it was all wiped away like a carefully crafted Etch A Sketch drawing handled much too carelessly.

I have no real tangible places to introduce, so I invite you, instead, to my sacred place made entirely of memories—the ones I had forgotten and the ones I was careful to tuck away for safekeeping.

I once said to a friend regarding a happening I no longer remember, “I will never forget it.” To which she responded, “But how will you know if you do?”

As she suspected would be the case, the memory I shared was lost to time, but I never forgot her question.

Ernest Hemingway famously said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

So, I bleed, praying my bloodletting somehow becomes a vehicle of healing, both for me, and for those who come after.

To remember is an oft-repeated, essential exhortation.

It keeps our stories from fading away entirely.

Memories beckon again today, so join me, if you will. We can think and remember and revisit, together.

But, please wade in slowly.

Softly.

Not with frolicking and splashing just yet, but with gentleness. There is so much more here than just stories, after all.

There are long since banished memories, wrapped in bandages and hidden in heretofore unexplored parts of my heart.

There are snapshots and remnants of a life still learning how they fit together with all that came after them.

There are wounds to reconcile, journeys to retrace, and joys to recover.

So, come carefully, friend.

The water here is deep in places.

We will be brave. We won’t drown in what was. We won’t pretend the waters were never rough, but we will stand in them without fear.

We will dip our toes bravely into what awaits, understanding that even here, surrounded by what was lost, there is still something sacred to be found.

So, wade in slowly with me, friend.
There is a lifetime here beneath the surface.

And it was glorious.