Being Overcome
Give me all the wonder and all the joy. Let it flood me.
Give me all the heartache and pain. If I must, I will let that flood me too.
I live and I feel and I love big. It’s the only way I know how to be. There is no such thing in my life as a tempered emotion, no such thing as a feeling that is only half-felt.
I’ve always known that loving big would mean losing big. I’ve also known that being madly in love with my life, with my people, with being alive would mean that I had so much more to lose.
I know that’s why this hurts so much, why it often feels like I’m drowning and will never come back up for air.
And there’s no way in hell I would ever have done it any other way.
Thank God I let myself be overcome with so much laughter and wonder and awe. Thank God I let myself be flooded with joy. Thank God I was so madly in love with my sister that we lived as though we could never leave each other, as though our time together would never end.
Even as I sit here in the aftermath, with all the broken pieces around me, wondering if my heart can ever be put back together again, I would do it all over again, just the same. Letting it all overcome me. Letting myself love just as big and just as wildly.
And my grief? Let it flood me. Sometimes it feels like it will kill me, but it feels worse to try to keep it at bay. I know there is healing for me in surrendering to that pain. I know my grief is a fire that will somehow make me new, even if it can’t make me whole, even when it threatens to burn me alive.
I want to experience it all, to surrender to it all, to never stop being in the alive-ness of it all. Even now, even in all of this, even when it hurts like hell. Sometimes I feel like I will never find myself again, but this part I know for sure: No matter what happens from here, I hope my heart will never shrink back, never close up, never pretend. I hope my heart will always let itself be overcome.
Give me all the heartache and pain. If I must, I will let that flood me too.
I live and I feel and I love big. It’s the only way I know how to be. There is no such thing in my life as a tempered emotion, no such thing as a feeling that is only half-felt.
I’ve always known that loving big would mean losing big. I’ve also known that being madly in love with my life, with my people, with being alive would mean that I had so much more to lose.
I know that’s why this hurts so much, why it often feels like I’m drowning and will never come back up for air.
And there’s no way in hell I would ever have done it any other way.
Thank God I let myself be overcome with so much laughter and wonder and awe. Thank God I let myself be flooded with joy. Thank God I was so madly in love with my sister that we lived as though we could never leave each other, as though our time together would never end.
Even as I sit here in the aftermath, with all the broken pieces around me, wondering if my heart can ever be put back together again, I would do it all over again, just the same. Letting it all overcome me. Letting myself love just as big and just as wildly.
And my grief? Let it flood me. Sometimes it feels like it will kill me, but it feels worse to try to keep it at bay. I know there is healing for me in surrendering to that pain. I know my grief is a fire that will somehow make me new, even if it can’t make me whole, even when it threatens to burn me alive.
I want to experience it all, to surrender to it all, to never stop being in the alive-ness of it all. Even now, even in all of this, even when it hurts like hell. Sometimes I feel like I will never find myself again, but this part I know for sure: No matter what happens from here, I hope my heart will never shrink back, never close up, never pretend. I hope my heart will always let itself be overcome.