Cracks And Crevasses

Cracks and crevasses. That’s where I go. That’s what I do. It’s 4:30 in the morning and I am getting ready to walk into the gym. It’s dark outside. I challenge myself to be better than I was yesterday. I do that every morning, 365 days a year.

Early Friday morning, before most people leave for work, I am out looking for the homeless. My day job, an outreach worker, leads me to the places that people do not want to go to. Those dark corners. Those places where you don’t feel safe. Trying to find those, who most have forgotten about. Why do I do it? Because people have done it for me. When God is removed from the equation, we should become that very extension love.

I get home in the evenings around 7:00, and immediately go into private practice. My clients, many deeply wounded, need a safe place to talk. And by doing so, I safely lead them into the cracks and crevasses of their past, so we can begin to build their future. It’s not a fun process, but a necessary one. It’s necessary because if we don’t clean up the past, they more than likely will repeat it.

Most nights I finish up practice around 10:00, and I enter into meditation. I have written about this many times. I fucking hate to meditate. But after that first deep breath and that long exhale, I enter into the void. My meditation practice used to be very structured. Now, not so much. I don’t have a goal. Eyes closed and no agenda, I go where I am supposed to be. And that usually leads to the cracks and crevasses. Those events and thoughts that I don’t want to think about. But through meditation, I see the blessing in the burden, and peace in the pain.

I don’t know the events that led me to become a crisis counselor in my early 20’s. But there was {and still is} a feeling of deep mystical energy when I’m in a crisis situation. I become hyper focused. Time slows down and all that matters is that moment. Those moments are usually dark, cold and sometimes brutal. But that’s where the healing takes place. Those cracks and crevasses that we don’t want to address, hold tremendous power.

I am not going to lie. At age 56, it is getting harder and harder to go to those dark places. But I will go. I will illuminate what light I have left inside. And when my last meditation becomes my last breath, I will look back at some very traumatic experiences, and simply say “Thank you.”