Sunday, November 23, 2014

How I Felt at Church Today: The Snow Globe.


Today at church,
I started remembering
all these times
from when it was warmer.

Sitting next to Bryce,
eating pizza
and wanting to be his friend,
but not having anything to say.

Standing in a circle
and eating Creamies
in the Alders' basement.

Sitting in the grass once,
talking to people
that I didn't know well.

Driving into the mountains
to chase the Northern Lights.

There was
a strange sense of pain
in all of these memories.

Rejection.
Alienation.
Disappointment.
Frustration.

But as I thought about them,
I felt a circle of joy
surrounding me like a snow globe.
The joy of all these memories.

Bryce and I are friends now.

The Creamies were good
and the friends were better.

Sitting in that grass
with those people I didn't know well
meant that the next time I talked to them,
I knew them better.

We didn't find the Northern Lights
but we laughed in the car
and sang Taylor Swift.

I felt like
I was in a snow globe.
And those memories
had been lying around my feet
and I thought they were broken
and sad.

But then someone tipped over
the snow globe,
and the memories flew around me
like snow
and I could see
that they were joyful.

I could see
that everything in the past
that had brought me pain
was now made of joy.

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