On the Mend

     I've been on Maui for seven days now. For the most part, I've been able to keep my feelings in check. In those few and rare moments though, I feel like I am going to break--either by myself or in front of others. Thoughts of him...of us come a little more often here since I am now living on the isle where we spent the first week of our marriage. However, in these seven days I've visited many of the places we spent time together...and I don't feel him here. His ghost, unlike home, isn't here. Maybe it was our temporary existence here on the island or just the realization that even then he didn't truly love me and was foreseeing the day in November where he would break me. Or perhaps I've just pushed him so far out of my mind that I could care less to see him here. I'll take that option over the other two, and I'll keep walking forward. Because for all the pain he's caused my psyche and heart, he's the reason I'm relaxing under the Maui sun today. He isn't here anymore, and I don't want him to return.

People keep asking me, "Why are you here on Maui?" And my answer-- it is time to heal.

     I took my chance and ran with it-- as far as I could to begin again even if it meant retracing those initial steps.
How else could I have spent the last two days:
hitching to the other side of Maui,
camping on the beach beneath the stars,
walking through the streets day and night,
swimming in the ocean,
climbing cliffs,
jumping off cliffs,
searching for sea turtles,
making new friends,
walk unknowingly onto a nudist beach,
having conversations with complete strangers,
enjoying the comforts of a couch,
and enjoying the company of Kawai, who's lived here his entire life growing up in the waves.

And I lived. Each and every moment, I soaked it all in. I allow the memories to stain because I want to keep them forever. 

     None of that possible without stepping out my front door. Taking that leap. Self-reliance is attainable here for me; I've been given the chance to see new things, find new people, new victories, and new problems. And I get to work through each of them.

     "We're too young to be afraid, to fly like mourning doves." 

   
     I listen to this line almost daily as I have Mikky Ekko's new album playing on repeat.

     I believe we are all too young to just give up because of the situations we live in. Tomorrow is unpromised, but it is new none-the-less, a chance to rethink, regroup and step forward. Out one door and into another or just a chance to step outside into the hot weather and enjoy that great ball of fire in the sky.

"Savor little glimpses of God's goodness and His majesty, thankful for the gift of them: winding pathways through the woods, a bright green canopy overhead, and dappled sunshine falling all around."