Final Release

"Consider the lilies" is the only biblical command I have ever obeyed. --Emily Dickinson

So, through this all I may have sounded like a neurotic mess. Perhaps. My total perspective vortex swirls with my inability to see things in their context, ie. I tend to magnify the little things out of proportion and hang onto them them longer than is good.

So what next?

What comes after release?

Embrace.

Embrace those I love, the life we have chosen, the path we are happily stomping and dancing on.

Take it slow.

Consider the lilies. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin.... (Matthew 28).

That same section of verse also talks about how you cannot serve two masters and love them both. Indeed. Mine are clear. My family and my career. I realize that I've craved an external label to give me self worth: architectural historian, curator, professor.....and somehow forgotten the simple but powerful: mother, wife, sister, friend. A job does not define who I am, I do. Love does.

That's why I love the Harry Potter series so much: love defines the hero, is his super power that defeats all evil. In the end his simple act of fretting over his young child's worries, his fatherhood, demonstrates the subtle and powerful ways love manifests. Some people hated that ending, while I saw it as a shining tribute to the entire series. They don't say what career he ended up in, just that he is father and husband and friend. Those are the roles that matter in the end.

So for me, I need to embrace my life and not cringe away from it, not hold myself to impossible standards, and just like the lilies.....in all weather, dance and play and grow.

Here's to 2008 and all the wonders it holds!