2017 SOLC Day 11: Wild and divine

"For one wild, glad moment we snapped the chain that binds us to earth, and joining hands with the winds we felt ourselves divine!"

--Helen Keller

This quote from my daily reading sparked specific memories, moments when I felt stronger, connected to a bigger whole, more-than.  Some were moments of crisis, but in each there was a sense of exhilaration or expansion, of knowing, certain of my place and my abilities.

Nature has often been the catalyst for these feelings.  Sitting in a tree alone when I was seven or eight, watching light play in the leaves and listening to birdsong on the breeze.  Gazing at the stars as a teenager with my friends on a back porch, crying from the beauty of the moment and the camaraderie we shared. Sitting on the deck of a rented beach house as an adult, breathing in the night's salty air, watching the stars disappear as a storm rolled in over the Gulf of Mexico.

There were sad and scary moments when I felt a divine strength.  When my daughter was born at 26 weeks, I remember lying in the recovery room where my husband, staunchly quiet until this moment, broke down in tears, worried about our baby's survival.  I remember saying, "She will be fine.  It will be okay," with absolute assuredness.  I believe I would have known and said otherwise if the reverse was to be true, but it wasn't.  Something in me knew our daughter would ultimately survive.  Two years later, I was sitting in a recliner in my parents' living room, listening to the ventilator that was keeping my mother alive. I looked up to meet my mother's eyes, already oddly wide open as her muscles to blink were weakening.  I knew in that moment that she was ready to leave, though it would be six months before we were able to get to that place.  Life and death decisions in such circumstances expanded my sense of self, drew on power that was not mine alone.

Big decisions and risky decisions make me feel that divine exhilaration.  The moment I said yes to my boyfriend's marriage proposal.  Making the decision to become pregnant, both times.  Taking a job as a NICU assistant.  The first time I got my motorcycle into second gear, riding around a parking lot. Enrolling in the master's program to obtain my library science degree.  Each event has called on me to step up, step out, be involved in something bigger than myself.  And when I do, I certainly feel a bit wild and connected to a divine source of power.