Drops of Moonshine

How do I choose to live with my eyes open?

I am broken, but when a broken person looks at herself in a broken mirror, she thinks she's okay. The only time we know our own brokenness is when someone unties the shoelaces holding us together. A million jagged pieces laying helter skelter on the floor: every fragment a memory, a sensation, a friend, a sticky cobwebbed spider string here and a drop of moonshine there. Every forbidden thought you've ever had mingling indifferently with dreams of elves and courage.

It's a reciprocal relationship, this catching sight of brokenness thing. Sometimes the child yanking loose the knot is the sight of another person's splinters and seams. Through the lens of Marie's crazy shouting and shuffling, I see my own desperate need for attention that has been carefully smothered by the layers of social correctness. Sometimes, in moments of honest self-evaluation, I see myself for what I truly am and so unveil the unpolished spaces of a friend. I have known guilt and shame. You tell me your story, and I have lived it too, I have inhaled and exhaled through those same moments, I can read between the lines to the fuller meaning.

But is that all we ever get to see?

It is not naivete to peer through the cracks. Though the wallpaper of our world can be ugly, it has been slapped on over something beautiful. And then too, it is a rare room whose walls are entirely unbroken by a window, that glimpse of something else entirely. We have mystery. We have beauty. We have hope.

The wonder is this: that we feel so much pain, but we absorb it into our soft flesh while our skeletons stand strong. I am not untouched, not completely resilient, but I am still standing, and my eyes have been left intact. Though vision may fog, all mists clear in the light of the sun, and I will wake up to glory when the morning comes.