The Truth of Becoming

All the things I thought I was and all the things I believed I wasn't defined me. All the labels, right-ways, wrong-ways, heartache, fear, and shame... for years and years I wove them into a heavy garment that covered me. I added layer after layer of fabric. The dense fabric provided perfection and protection from the pain of an unforgiving world. I sewed and sewed until the weight of the garment became crushing. It obscured my vision and I lost my path. The fabric became tangled up and ripped from its own weight. I felt terror surfacing and frantically tried to keep it from tearing anymore. I told myself I needed the garment. What if the world saw the lies I told myself, my heartache and my shame?

Twelve years ago in a single moment, the fabric ripped beyond repair and I felt the raw pain rushing in. I screamed at God. Why is this so painful? In that moment I had no other choice, but to sit with the pain. I felt the rawness through the holes in the fabric. I eventually surrendered and dove deeply into the depth of the pain, allowing it to teach me, to guide me and to show me where I was crying out for love and forgiveness.

As layer after layer fell, the becoming became the un-becoming. Revealing each layer uncovered more of my truth. The treasure beneath the heartache calling me home into my raw, unobscured, vulnerable, naked, true-self. Who would I become without the protection of the layers of fabric? I slowly unraveled each layer of fabric revealing the raw diamond at the center that formed in the darkness and intense pressure.

In this moment, I stand here in curiosity. As a raw diamond suspended between two worlds, no longer part of the darkness in which it formed and not yet carved into it’s brilliant potential. Endlessly becoming.