Wash

It's Good Friday. I'm scrubbing floors. That's a good thing. I've been looking forward to the quiet and for the opportunity to make things clean again. The chance to slow down. To settle. It's overcast and rainy and everything feels hushed. It lets me think. Truly pause and open up my heart and let it all out. Tears mixed with warm soapy water. No one will notice. And I can just have a moment without trying to hold it all together like I sometimes do. I am overwhelmed with the mix of utter gratefulness this week has brought and the sting of regret mixed with sadness on some levels too....vinegar and water....all twined together. Four long years it has been. The death of things brought the birth of others. That is not lost on me. And the beauty that has come from all those ashes....things salvaged from the fire of what consumed my entire life.....it is never what I planned in my wildest dreams yet some of it was my dream. There is no joy without pain. Heartache means that we did love and makes loving all the more sweater. It softens our hearts and makes our responses kinder. It reminds us we are human and so is everyone else. It's is grace given when grace was heaped on our own heads more times than we can count, yes....today. And so I want to clean more that my floors. I want to let my heart have some time of its own to let it all out. The sadness, the regret, the bitter roots that have no place. And let Him wash it clean with the Living Water He brought to us this very day. It is a Good Friday. Thankful.