Like weary passengers on a ship after a long, grueling voyage, we can spot the shore of 2021 from here. In the throes of 2020’s shakings, many of us yearn for exit routes as we cast hopes like anchors into the foreign land of the new year.

No platitudes satisfy after a storm

No Hallmark cards for devastation

No words truly hold a heart freshly torn

It all feels like empty placation

Maybe it’s your spouse. Maybe your lifelong friend. Or your parent or your child, your coworker, your boss — but there’s this one area where you find yourself trapped in a loop of unresolved tension…

Empty-handed I come to these healing waters. It’s been a long, strenuous journey. At first, familiar adrenaline energized my gait and disguised the exhaustion, but gradually, the pace began to sag till I arrived here in a slump.

On her childhood playground she watches the other children play. An impenetrable wall separates her from them, but she doesn’t know why. In her eyes they are one huddled organism, an exoskeleton with its armored back against her.

I exercise just enough to satisfy my doctor at my yearly visits. But when I do, I prefer a ballet barre, because I’ve always loved a good plié. When I focus on leaning into it with the right technique, something inside me shifts.

That area we go to great lengths to avoid – that’s where He now takes me. I didn’t just casually leave it, I slammed the door to all my ferocious fears and bolted as far and fast as I could… No need to go back to those sinister shadows where old rejection and loneliness roam like tyrant trolls.

Never again will the waves of destruction rip me into their swirling tides of terror. Chaos. Fear. Confusion.

Alone.

Unlike their Colgate-whitened pictures on postcards, the Mediterranean sands of Malaga are dark. Earthy. Scattered shells and rocks give a much rougher impression to the eye than the softness that greets the hand.

Above the clouds the restraints fall away. Gravity seems less oppressive, and I can feel again the kind of air my lungs were meant to breathe, albeit this is actually the cabin-pressured airplane environment. I can see differently from here.

4 AM. Torn by the timeless tyranny of night fears. This and that, distorted to nightmare proportions, claw my soul to some drowsy semi-awake awareness that my head is throbbing and my body shaking. Deep sigh.

Before I awake, I feel the longings stir in my soul… just to be a cat in the sun, stretched out in God’s warmth, lazy in the most luxurious way. Ahhhhhh, purring, I feel the promise of Sabbath caress my tired mind, as I gradually emerge from the night.

I was nine when we moved to the village. A winding creek weaving through it parallel to the one main street where mom and pop stores and picturesque farmhouses scattered among modern family homes completed the illusion of a Hallmark movie ambiance.

What do you do when pain charges through your system so savagely that you lose control? Convulsions from the shock rip through you worse than an epileptic episode, and you find yourself biting your tongue or your lip and don’t even notice the bloody damage.

I didn’t plan to be raped that night. Staying home for once from the Copenhagen nightlife to prepare for a test the next day, I was reacquainting myself with a solitude I realized I had missed. Gently flickering candles and a hot shower caressed my senses, as I was exhaling into the unfamiliar quiet. My guard was down.

“You smell good,” someone whispers, as we both move from hug to hug in the group gathering around the coffee and snacks table. It’s Tuesday night, and defying the tropical downpour outside, we pour into this oasis, thirsty for the kind of warm community that makes the soul feel seen and safe.

The night of my first conversation with her father, her name was his answer to my question, which he later confessed had annoyed him: “Was is your favorite word in the English language?”

In my defense, I had only been in his country a week, and words fascinate me. He fascinates me.

A cool Antigua wind breathes into the white tent where we are gathered to worship, to seek His face, and to find fresh strength together. From all over the world, we are one.

“Quiero vivir cerca de Ti

que sea real el cielo en mi”

We’ve passed over Havana when the tears begin streaming down my face. Uninvited. Quiet.

I didn’t know they were right under the surface, just waiting for enough stillness to emerge.

It’s one of those rare days where the sunshine calls us into its light and we have the freedom to follow. Yearning to feel the wind whip our faces, my man and I hop on his Harley, but every stop sign and every intersection, there’s a traffic jam. An obstacle course to our rush.