Seeking Sanctuary

My heart and soul scream out for Sanctuary, where are you?   When will you come?   My voice is hoarse and my throat full of pain from the dry scratch that is created every time I try and whisper your name. My body trembles under the weight of the pain.  I miss You desperately and I need to be comforted.  Where is my Sanctuary, where is my temple, the earth has been violently shaken beneath me and crumbled all that I held dear to the very core.  

Shaken, and broken, crumbling down into the earth. Nothing left to be seen but mangled wreckage of something that once might have been beautiful.

Where is my Sanctuary, where is my temple.  I went searching for you and in my zealous search, I lost sight of you and can no longer even find Joy.  Where did she go, she has broken my heart, and I miss her deeply with a sadness born only in a soul that has known too much pain and sorrow for these few years on this earth.

Where is my solace?   Where is my comfort?   I cry out for you, but you have abandoned me. I followed my hearts cry completely and totally for the first time ever and my world shook and trembled and crumbled violently under the weight of my dream.

My anger and brokenness do nothing to comfort, they remind me of my inadequacies and that my life is not of value, if it were, I would not have to walk through such pain and brokenness.  Why…

So often in life I am stuck in the why, and even if I had an answer as to why every bad thing that has cut me so deeply and left scars in my very soul, the why still will not help me to heal.  The why doesn't help.

Where is my Sanctuary, where is my dream, and what corrupted it to such dark confusion and turmoil.  It started burning so bright and clear, but this is dim and fading in the growing darkness and I can’t seem to gather enough life together to keep the flame burning.  I watch it slowly flickering and fading and I fight the fear that rises from my soul that says it will never light again if I let it out. 

Yet I have no Sanctuary, no place of peace and comfort to rest my weary soul and to lick and tend to my wounds that run so very deep. 

No I must keep running, running, running. 

Running blindly from my past, and blindly into my future.   

Running, running, running.  My mind won’t stop, my mind won’t give me peace, but my heart fears daily that it will stop.  I fear the pain  in my heart could confuse it to stop pumping, it has already lost cadence repeatedly for months now, almost a year, and there are days where I wait to see if the pain subsides or if it will finally take over and consume me completely, removing me from this world altogether.

I often have wondered how much loss and grief the human soul can handle before it departs from this world, I wasn't testing the concept, I was trying to assure myself that I hadn't been given too much and that my heart would continue to beat even under the weight of the pressing water of the world that closes in around me.  

The sinking, sinking, sinking down into the depth of despair that holds me like a beaten child is held by their mother after they were beaten by her.   Comfort doesn't come through her, how could it.

Sanctuary, what does it mean to me, a haven of safety.   It is not something I have been able to experience a great deal of in life.   

I learn now I have to make my own sanctuary.  It is inside me, inside my temple, this holy body that I so often mutilate with unkind words and harsh critiques.  How do I reset my internal dialogue to that of joy, peace, harmony, and love for myself, instead of the things that were placed in me by others that aren't even the tiniest faction of the truth about me.

I used to know where my hope came from, now I am not so sure.  Tears that won’t stop falling, blind the truth and blur it to an unrecognizable form that I continually move about internally trying to scoot here or there and find the right spot for it, but it just doesn't fit anywhere.  The throw pillow and teddy bear I placed on top of it do nothing to disguise it, it is still unrecognizable to me, no matter how long I stare at it, I cannot see it for what it is.  When did these blinders get placed on my eyes, and why won’t they fall off.

Before I had hope, I always had a hope in the better, and the higher.   Hope that something was there that would lift me from my grief and that someone placed me in this world for a reason, not just for blind confusion that leads me from walking into one wall after another, and another, and another.

The wisdom I thought my soul possessed and before thought was good and secure, I have now found to be very inadequate and there are complete volumes missing from the library of my soul.  Volumes that I blacked out, by not believing in their very existence.  

If you deny something long enough in your life, you really won’t see it anymore.  Of course the pain that comes through that is that once you black out enough things that full of grief, well, you can’t keep them contained and sealed up.  They start to rot and fester in the container you placed them in, and then they begin to ooze out of their crate and start to infect the surrounding areas of your soul, until the darkness has permeated almost everything.

So I face the grief and turmoil head on, I won’t run anymore, I am not afraid, fear has never been able to hurt me, it is just an emotion, just a feeling and it passes like all feelings do… 

But where is my Sanctuary, I still can’t find it.  I need my Sanctuary, I need my temple restored, I need the foundation rebuilt, and can’t seem to find any volunteers to help. 

So I begin the work again on my own.  

Amazingly, comfort comes through repetition, and healing comes through the repetition.  

Some days you have to decide that just  breathing in and out today is an accomplishment, because some days all you can do is breathe.  And then maybe tomorrow I can start to clean up some of the wreckage in my soul from this earthquake.

It simply means it is time to rebuild.   

To stand up.   

To get up.   

To start again. 

So I stand up, I shake the dust from my sandals and I begin again, this time I will find my Sanctuary, and when I do, I will never let her go again…