Some days are sunrise, all day. The bleeding drops of orange peer in over the peaks of hills and the energy is self-reflective, poignant and powerful. You know the day will take you places you would rather not be, but even then, hope prevails and you accomplish a task and move on to the next until you’ve completed a round of necessary toil, allowing you to feel privileged enough to reward yourself with friends, family, rest, a glass of something–a quiet moment of reflection.

Some days are sunsets, all day. The darkening down of expectations, the hint of light showing through enough to illuminate the escape plan that must inevitably spring into action because whatever hope was before, is diminished now. There may be a quiet moment to come-but for now, all is chaos, beyond you and yet you will bear the brunt of it, you will carry it on yourself like water buckets half-full, heavy, splashing, unwieldy and necessary.

Your tongue speaks words of encouragement–it must. If you cannot encourage, then you cannot change and of course, you know you can. But you don’t always choose to and it’s easy to tell someone that you’re lesser, that you’re not strong. It’s easier to collapse into sorrow–not so much your own sorrow, but the sorrow you borrow from others. You want their sympathy–you get trapped by your own drama and you hear music playing as you stumble through each moment. You fix your hair just so and your eyes are just damp enough to avoid looking like you’ll cry, but open enough to convince people that you did. 

You can choose, of course. Emerson said, “The power which resides in [you] is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.” And trying is everything. Trying is an answer unto itself. 

You’ll remove the blinders and you’ll peer through to notice glorious color in ordinary days. You’ll find love you didn’t know existed and it will shame you into a kind of rewarding warmth that you’ll learn to cultivate on your darkest days–and that love will be everything. It will be your own self-reliance and in that moment, God will creep in and remind you why it is.

For now, it is a burden–for now, it is unclear and misunderstood. It is an argument to make and a stand from which to retreat. It is loneliness and holiness in a package, wrapped and with a bow–and as yet, you’ve not opened it.

But you will–and from it will spring the freshest days, the freshest flowers and the fragrant dawn of life beautiful, neatly picked and just so.

​Onward.