I had a revelation.

I cracked my pot! And that’s a very good thing! I think it happened about a year and a half ago.

I used to put up with things. For various reasons. I put up with a loveless marriage for 19 years. Why? Many reasons. I kept thinking it would get better. I did. For about 13 years. But it never did. In fact it got worse. Then I think I spent years in denial. Then I think my extreme aversion to conflict helped me hold on a few more years. And not wanting anyone to find out my life was a sham. Oh- I probably didn’t want to know that, either. I stopped contacting most of my family about six or seven years before the divorce. Stopped taking family pictures. Sending Christmas cards. Just put my head down and plowed through life. Work. Kids. Laundry. Groceries. Cooking and cleaning and baths and chronically ill Mark and chauffeur and…

But I knew. My container was pretty tight. I was root bound. But I wasn’t about to change my container! Oh no! That was what was supposed to SAVE me! Don’t you see? If I could just keep listening to the advice others told me. If I could just keep on keeping on. God would reward me. Turn it all around.

But that was MY container. I did that to me. I allowed it to happen. Slowly, insidiously. I brought God in there WITH me! God was this way and that way. Wanted this and that. Black or white. Yes or no. Good or evil.

But my constitution knew better! That still small voice inside of me kept on. Qualities I didn’t even know I had, aspects of me that I didn’t even know were there, were expanding at my core. My roots took what water and nutrients they could find… And finally… CRACK!!!! The roots expand! The dirt expands! I cannot be contained!

It happened! And finally the roots had air. And the clarity sank in and went deep.

Sometimes life begins because you prepare for it. Till the soil. Compost. Water.

Sometimes life bursts forth even when we think it can’t!!! And life won’t be stopped. Or suppressed.

Have you ever seen a flower grow THROUGH a cement sidewalk? A tree grow out of a rock? A crocus poke through layers of snow?

Life won’t be contained. Thankfully.