Devoted.
I am pursuing truth. The joy of the pursuit! A challenge that is charming. Insight that feels like someone lit a match in a dark cave. Wide-open windows which used to be shut. I am a woman who has opened her heart up. I am a soul tasting the freedom of trust. (Prov. 29:25)
There were so many moments this November when I felt I was in the presence of something or someone truly beautiful. Almost every day I found myself in a basilica, church, or chapel contemplating love and other virtues. Considering the flatness of materiality before I enter, and the delicate (but noticeable) increase in color after, it seems like something is transposed while I am inside. I am slightly out-of-tune like a little broken piano, and then grace falls slowly like snow, settles on my keys, and I’m playing again with a bit more life, a bit more clarity of tone, and a visible eagerness to share a pleasing song.
But this isn’t how it always was — even just one year ago I was falling apart at the seams. My confusion and desperation danced together dangerously. I hurt the one I loved dearly, pleading with myself, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Rom. 7:15) Why? And how can a pile of splintered wood even begin to resemble an instrument, let alone one worthy of creating beautiful music? I just wanted to be good, but my thorn: I couldn’t recognize my worth.
The breakdown was gradual, until it wasn’t.
After the betrayal of my body commenced with TSW, a suffocating lack of purpose and direction took a stronger hold. I tried to stifle it and listen to the advice of others. Tried to put on a smile and follow the logical rules of the game. But instead of obediently falling in-line, gently finding my own way, or turning to ask for help — a blinding fear consumed me and I fought recklessly in the dark.
I found myself alone in a foreign country unable to sleep, extremely uncomfortable in my own skin, with a boy’s haircut and no profession. What had I done? I didn’t recognize myself. And yet, stubbornly, I dug deeper while more and more of what I thought was my identity was stripped away (When I think back on this period, I can’t remember anything clearly. It’s like a black hole in my memory. Probably filled with too much pain…).
Somehow, with the fog still unlifted, I decided it was time to start praying (this was not something I was doing). And it wasn’t just one distressed prayer sent up in agony on my knees during the roughest of nights either. Out of nowhere, I felt this pull to completely devote myself and genuinely try to orient myself towards God as much as I could. Why not now? I was all alone anyways.
I downloaded an app called Hallow and replaced all of my mindless scrolling, entertainment, and distraction with different forms of prayer, reflection, and study. As I received little bits of wisdom, my heart unfolded like the petals of a rose. Slowly, I began to experience moments of true peace. I had been seeking mere comfort, but found also goodness, truth and beauty. Ten months of compounding and expanding devotion, I am not just going through the motions anymore. I am alive. Truly alive.
We know we are excited by and drawn to beauty, but many of us can’t distinctly describe what ‘real’ beauty is. Is there a defining feature? Is it purely visible or experienced through interaction? Beauty is something I definitely want to peel back the layers of through reflections over time. Now that I am looking for it, I am realizing how much beauty we can overlook and how important it really is because of its connection to those other two qualities: truth and goodness.
I would like to leave you with a quote from a book that means a lot to me and many others I’m sure:
“One evening, when we were already resting on the floor of our hut, dead tired, soup bowls in hand, a fellow prisoner rushed in and asked us to run out to the assembly grounds and see the wonderful sunset. Standing outside we saw sinister clouds glowing in the west and the whole sky alive with clouds of ever-changing shapes and colors, from steel blue to blood red. The desolate grey mud huts provided a sharp contrast, while the puddles on the muddy ground reflected the glowing sky. Then, after minutes of moving silence, one prisoner said to another, "How beautiful the world could be...”
―Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
With gentleness,
Solée
