pondering

"Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." I do the same.

With both my greatest joys and my deepest heartaches. "All these things..."

Some feelings and experiences are simply far too wonderful, much too precious, for me to even begin trying to explain them to others. And so... I ponder them in my heart.

Some situations and raw emotions are too big, too extreme, too altogether horrible, to ever try to put words on them. And so... I ponder them in my heart.

Some moments, both magnificent and wretched, simply won't fit inside the alphabet. They can't squeeze into words. They can't be packaged and given to others. They are only to be experienced. And felt. And pondered.

The past few weeks have been filled with some of my most wonderful and most painful moments. I live in the tension of the two extremes that war at each other within that pondering place of my heart.

Cooped up. Fighting for elbow-room. Unable to both fit within the confines of my insides.

And unable to be shouldered by anyone else.

Only me.

I'm not talking about dwelling on things in the worrying sense, although I do plenty of that. But there is a realistic need to just sit in things sometimes. There's the unavoidable truth of not being able to escape the crap of your own life, no matter where you go or who you're with.

It is what it is what it is.

And sometimes it's fighting to get out---to be acknowledged, to be shared---but will never find phrases big enough to offer it a means of escape.

Some things are simply meant to be pondered and held onto.

And my heart feels every ounce of their weight.