Peace somehow, and 26.2.
As another tear slid down her cheek, he said to her “It’s a part of yourself that you’re gonna have to live with. Just like you’re gonna have to make peace with the scars from…”
“…the accident” my mind filled in, dubbing over the words he actually used talking with the officer seeking therapy in the show I was watching early Sunday evening from the couch with my tiny little dog curled up peacefully next to me - an adorable tiny little grin on her face.
“…and my past” my thoughts continued as I stared at the still screen, frozen and muted in a panic upon hearing his words. Images from 23 years ago, 8 years ago, 3 years ago, 2 years ago, last week, and back to 23 years ago flashed in my head seemingly all at the same time, and yet each with such distinction that overwhelming emotions flooded me as if each event had only just bruised my life earlier that day.
Now the tears were streaming down my own face, mirroring hers I had just witnessed as she listened quietly but intently to his counsel.
“Does it get easier? Does the weight of the burden lighten? Will I always be one line from a tv show away from hearing my own heartbeat and feeling the salty sting in my eyes?” I wondered quietly to myself… or maybe, in fact, aloud since my tiny little dog twisted her head and looked up at me from under her tiny little lashes with those tiny little intense “I’m sorry it hurts, Mom” eyes.
I looked at the clock. 7:29 pm. Not time for supper yet, and still hours until I could disappear for a while into sleep. I felt the nerve buzz in my right foot as I shifted (a new injury… another injury), and I felt myself starting to spin out. I pressed play on the remote hoping to drown out the voices of fear and distract myself for just a little longer into the evening.
“But it doesn’t have to limit you.” He continued.
I paused it again- the image freezing on the woman’s face, stained with tears I can only imagine fell mixed with grief, pain, and hope at the sound of his consolation. I halted the question instinctive to those doubtful and fatigued by a discouraging journey- that of “But how?”.
For one very long moment, one I wish could have stretched to this day now two weeks later, I clung to his last remark like my dirty Gund stuffed bear I’ve had since I was 9 years old. I wanted to believe. My life waiting up ahead needed me to believe.
As I sat holding tightly to this stuffed bear statement I thought back to the week prior when, leaning over the kitchen bench to take weight off my feet, I watched incredibly inspiring Facebook reels of distance runners crossing the finish lines at the Boston and London marathons that had both just happened that week before.
Tears in my eyes then too, I whispered my desperate plea “Please God, I want this for me too.” And before I’d had a chance to focus back on the runners then pouring over the finish, hugging loved ones, or crumbling to the ground out of humbled gratitude, pride, relief, and unexplainable joy, I heard back from above “With Me all things are possible.”
Back on the couch I sat in silence, committing to memory the lines spoken on the show.
“But it doesn’t have to limit you.”
My story had some chapters added that I wasn’t expecting- chapters that, once read, even if torn out in attempt to rewrite the narrative, can never be forgotten.
Even so, the ending has not yet been scripted. I know that my past might limit the future I had in mind for myself. But it hasn’t limited the future God has in mind.
