If the waters can redeem me...

There was a full moon last night. I felt its pull. All day my body ached. I've been carrying pain. I'm so accustomed to carrying this "pain-weight" that sometimes I believe I must carry it.

I lose hope that feeling good is an option for me. Indeed, I begin to believe I deserve this pain. I've made mistakes, haven't I? I've hurt myself and others, haven't I? Well, then. This is justice. I am reaping what I've sowed.

Ah, no, love. That is the old mind. That is the old way of might-makes-right, of eye-for-eye. Those are the old voices. It's time to speak words of gentleness to those old voices, to kindly but firmly tell them where to go. It's time for grace to pick me up and do for me what I cannot do for myself.

Last night I walked out under a cloudless, dark sky. I let moonlight fall over me. I breathed. I'd poured out words on paper, all my longing and pain and heartache bound up in black and white. I held those words tightly and then...it was time—the moon was full, she was tugging at my pain, urging me to release it. I tore the paper and I loosed my pain.

I didn't plan what happened next...but suddenly, I needed to be in the water. I ran inside, tugged on a bathing suit.

Mama? You're going swimming? At night in the cold water?

My son followed me, bewildered. Me—his wild Mama—I threw my head back and let the laughter bubble up. Yes, let's be silly and wild under this silver full-moon.

I stepped into the pool and gasped with the cold shock of it. Cold right. Cold good. I was in my pool, stretching my arms to the moon.

Tree shadows and reflected moon rippling across the water, silver light falling all around me; a kind of baptism. I prayed: Holy Mother, untie these knots that bind me.

My son stood witness. He held out a towel for me as I emerged from the pool, shivering. We scurried inside together. Silly Mommy. Silly, silly swimming at night in the freezing cold water. What laughter! What wide-eyed wonder. What unexpected joy.

I felt the pain lift and when I woke this morning, the moon was still shining—beginning to set in a sky turned pink with sunrise.

With deep gratitude to my soul-sisters...your words of affirmation poured grace over me last night and gave me the courage to be born again under a moon-drenched sky.

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This song. It's my soul-home. I've had it on repeat all day. Maybe you'll find soothing here, too?