Born Again

{This series was inspired by my son's sixth grade english assignment

 of writing for six minutes, without edits or overthinking it.  

I'll be posting daily quick writes for the month of March.}

I once questioned a mormon missionary about why mormons don't use the phrase "born again."  The missionary simply stated that being "born again" was viewed as a process, not an event.

A process.  Not an event.

What a powerful and wise statement, right?

At the time, I wrote those words down on an index card and stuck it in my brand new bible.  I recently came across that 24-year old card and pulled it out to read.  I decided to use it as a bookmark.  It's since become a little mantra.

This weekend was spent heating kettles of hot water for tea, stoking fires and spilling the truth about a great many things to my best friend of 25 years.  Truths that had mostly been said only in my mind and not out loud.  At first, I parsed them out slowly and carefully, but by the end of our days together I felt the urgency to unleash them before it was too late.  Too late for what?  I'm not sure.

Truth telling doesn't come easily to me.  I'm often scared of how it will be received, how it will land.  I'm fearful of the fallout - knowing full well a lot of this fear is manufactured and adjusted to assist in keeping my secrets safe, guarded.

I found freedom in saying hard words and thoughts and confessions out loud.  I wrote down things that I wanted to be free of and wrote, in capital letters, the word GUILT and centered it in the middle of the page.  I read my list of shame and guilt to my friend, my witness.  I vowed to be free and move forward and to rid myself of the self-hatred.  I no longer want to operate from that place.

I positioned that ugly piece of paper on top of the small stack of burning firewood and bid it farewell.  I shut the doors on the wood stove and sunk into the couch and watched it burn and then double-checked the ashes to make sure nothing remained.

I felt born again.