Slow Fade

"Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life"...(Proverbs 4:23). I am now back in California and I came across a song I had never heard before called "Slow Fade" by Casting Crowns. While I was hiking, I listened to it several times and was struck by the accuracy of the words. Part of the lyrics are: "It's a slow fade, when you give yourself away. It's a slow fade, when black and white turn to gray....thoughts invade, choices made, a price will be paid when you give yourself away. People never crumble in a day.....because it's a slow fade." I can relate fully to the message in this song. As much as I have learned over the course of my life, I discovered that some lessons may need to be repeated. Sometimes it takes us several times to really "get it." My most recent fade was luckily short lived. I don't regret some choices I have made over the past six months. I have learned tremendously and hopefully have a deeper compassion for myself and others. I re-approached some things differently and can now say that I have given some old issues a new and better perspective. With that said however, some things can never be fixed, nor are they necessarily meant to be. I know myself...and whenever I try to tell myself what I "should be" doing versus what my heart is telling me, I get off track. Perhaps that's why I love writing about following our hearts...because I know personally how difficult that is sometimes when we have this internal battle raging, between our heads and our hearts. Okay, my heart wins...but it's still a battle sometimes. I have come back to life recently, feeling as if I have come out of a daze. My last fade may have been short lived but it was intense. I probably felt the closest I've ever been to a depression. I lost my usual zeal and excitement for life and I felt my heart slipping away. I just felt numb. I pushed away my dreams and distanced myself from thoughts and feelings of what really brings me to life. I slowly neglected my heart for various reasons, some of which have to do with duty and obligations. I was free in my choice to do so but I paid a price for it. There were moments that if I could have painted a portrait of how I felt inside, it would have been of me on the ground, crumbled and in tears. Oh, I managed occasionally to get up and to reconnect...but I'd slowly fade away again. It took all of my energy to have those moments of optimism. That's probably why I just couldn't manage to write. I profoundly lacked the energy or the words to try to inspire anyone. I went into an emotional seclusion. I understand now how people slowly fade away and end up so disconnected. People fade into something they never intended to be. It doesn't happen over night and the longer you dismiss how you are really feeling, the longer you believe the lie you are living. No wonder it's so tough for people to undo the damage they've done to themselves when they have faded into oblivion. I know people like that....loved one's who are so detached and separated from who they really are. Living like that feels empty and like living half dead. I just thank god that I had enough of a reprieve recently to come back to my senses. Tuning my heart back into it's proper course breathes life into me constantly and is the oxygen I was missing. “If you realize what the real problem is - losing yourself - you realize that this itself is the ultimate trial"...(Joseph Campbell). “Only when you are lost can love find itself in you without losing its way"...(Helene Cixous).