I stand on the pier at my marina. The moon is full, the sky clear, and ice-blue light is washing the cooling sweat from my body. All alone, I gaze around me in all directions, every sight as well-known to me as it is well-loved. And as I stand here, so still, I’m reminded forcibly of all the full moons I took into myself two years ago, hungry and desperately unhappy, misery sealing every airway like a plastic bag. Trapped I was, on every side. I so clearly remember running here, bathed in the blessed heat rolling over me in waves. I was closed in. My miserable circumstances hemmed me in. I was in the thick of them, no immediate way out.
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I raise my eyes to the moon, aware of the dulled edge to my once-keen joy, made all the sharper because it was one of my only joys. Palpable unhappiness and an utter helplessness in it does that to your remaining pleasures – they are never so bright and rich as when isolated by pain.
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But now. Now. Everything is different. I am aware of all my friends getting ready for bed while I am running free, the weight on their chests growing imperceptibly heavier as they prepare for their last night before the prison doors open to welcome them back.
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And I am not one of them.
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I am awash in wonder. Their brief parole is over, the summer all gone away, draining like the last soap suds in a sink of clean dishes that are about to get dirty again. Tomorrow, they go back to their classrooms and their rules and their mad students and their merciless parents. While I stand here and gaze at the beautiful, beautiful moon. Has a moon every been so beautiful? Even last night when I ran to find a flooded marina and followed my desires and stripped and dove into the waters all alone? Even then? No. I think not.
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I wake up tomorrow a free woman. God, how many cloying days and claustrophobic nights did I yearn with all that was within me for release, for freedom, for rescue? How many tears did I cry, how many minutes spent with my eyes closed against my reality as I gathered the frayed threads of my soggy strength to face the next hour?
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And as I stand here, full of what I could not find for so long, it occurs to me just how far removed I am from that woman curled up on the pier. I dreamed of rescue from my current circumstances and could see no possibility for it than to marry the love of my life and be a stay-at-home wife and mother. After all, that was my long-held and cherished dream. I truly wanted that. So how could anyone but a man be the agent of my escape? It may seem archaic, but it was my dream.
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Who knew that two years later, long after I lost hope of every getting out, the man came. But he did not rescue Rapunzel from the tower where she was trapped. And who knew that the mother in me – the most lasting artery in my body which pumped the richest blood through me – would be dead now for a time? Who knew that no escape would come except by God’s own hand? In all the days and months and years I longed for escape, I never dreamed of actually quitting without a visible safety net. Only when I had experienced God himself for a year and a half and finally understood for myself what his Spirit feels like guiding my decisions and feelings could I take such a deep plunge. God himself has rescued me, has fulfilled in his own time all his many promises. My beloved ezer. My hero. No man did this. Nor I. It truly took all God is to do these things in my life.
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I will stand tomorrow a free woman. I will stand amazed at all God has done with his own hands and all he is preparing to do. I expect everything I have never known. I will not be disappointed. Because I am free indeed.
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