cinderella.

I keep thinking about flickering lights in the woods. I see them in my mind’s eye. I get up, I follow them. I am not content that they are distant pleasant distractions; I wonder if they will lead me to a better place than here, and so I go.

I think that’s a metaphor, and maybe a strange one at that. But at six am I cannot sleep, and this is what I am thinking, among other things. It is odd for a girl who was born asleep to not be good at sleeping right now. Sleep is part of my birthright, it would seem; my first showcased talent on this earth.  Oh well, a real talent never really leaves. What is that verse in the Bible? Something about the gifts and callings from God being irrevocable? Well then, my good-at-sleeping-ability will be back around presently, I suppose.

I am also thinking about happy endings and fairy tales–stories that leave you feeling like it’s worth it. All of it. Because look where you are now. As a small girl, I used to read Cinderella every time I felt sad and hopeless inside. It was my parable, the lesson I wanted to learn. The story of a girl who had nothing on the outside, but everything on the inside–a heart full of song, animals who she really loved, and the ability to never stop seeing beauty in the midst of what seemed like drudgery to most everyone else–spoke to me. She also had very tiny ankles, just like a good Disney Princess. That is a small aside, but I have always thought ankles are rather important.

But Cinderella’s heart was postured right. And she didn’t have a guarantee that a Fairy Godmother and subsequently a Prince would show up, but when they did, it wasn’t like her heart had to change much to reflect that kind of joy and goodness and grace.

Her heart was sort of there the whole time. Finding the grace, finding the joy. Even if it was just  a small, fat mouse in a belly shirt. Actually, come on, I could live on that kind of joy for a long time, were I to discover a Gus-Gus of my own.

Over the past year, I have been disappointed a lot. To the point where sometimes the taste of ash in my mouth feels normal. Still, I don’t want to learn the lesson of disappointment. I don’t want to be afraid to hope. I was talking to my brother about this today and he told me that life without hope is a bleak, bleak thing. And I agree.

Somebody came up to me in church today and asked if he could pray for me. I don’t have much to lose right now; I would accept prayer from the devil himself, if he seemed sincere. Just kidding, that’d be weird. But the man who prayed for me–I don’t know him at all. He carried an actual handkerchief in his hand and I was relieved that he did not offer it to me. I don’t ever want to use somebody else’s used handkerchief. Just one of my goals. But he told me that he sometimes cries when he prays for people and then started wiping his own eyes with it, and telling me things I already knew, for the most part. “You have had a hard life,” he said.

At one point, this would not have been the case–but now, it rather is. Though I try not to think about life in such black and white categories. Yes, sometimes I have to scrub the floors while everybody else goes to the ball, metaphorically speaking, but then there is Gus-Gus. There is joy. There is humor. There is something good–those flickering lights in the woods that I see, even if it’s just in my mind’s eye.

By now the man and I are both crying and I am still relieved that he is not trying to share his handkerchief with me.

“You have had many disappointments,” he continues, “Many painful disappointments and God sees them. He’s taking them from you and he’s giving you grace in the moment.”

Grace in the moment.

I am not sure what that means. But I think it has something to do with Gus-Gus and something to do with flickering lights in the woods and something to do with the posture of my heart and something to do with choosing hope despite the disappointments that would lead me to choose something that is decidedly less risky than hope.

Because, yes, life without hope is a bleak, bleak thing, indeed.