Wow. It's been ten years. Ten years and 5 days ago I found out my husband at the time had another life that I didn't know about. 5 days later, on 9/11, I was alone in an empty house, 2,000 miles from my family and friends, with MY entire world crashing around me and THE entire world crashing, with such monstrous visuals that my brain still can't and won't wrap around. Life as we all had known it was forever changed, in many, many ways. And for the first time, I felt like I would see the end of the world.
A month later, I said to myself while driving my car to work "if my body is still here in a year, maybe I will start to care again". I know it's a terrible thing to say (and I have learned not to speak such things) but I don't think I cared what happened to my body at the time, almost like I wanted it to hurt as much as I did... That very night I totaled my car in a head on collision. I was in shock and did not go to the hospital. The next night I ended up in the emergency room in the middle of the night, all by myself, with internal bleeding, not knowing if I would lose an organ if the bleeding didn't stop (which it did, thank God). I had cracked/bruised ribs, I started walking differently because of the pain in my lower back, it felt like it was slipping down when I walked for too long and I couldn't lay flat on my back, my knees were numb for years. But I was lucky.
I was in Los Angeles recording an album with Rosemary Butler at the time. When I would go to the studio to sing I had to wear lidocaine patches on my ribs, so I could breathe deep enough to sing because it hurt to breathe. And I loved every minute. She thought I was so brave at the time. What she didn't know was that music was the most pleasurable thing in my life. I fell in love with the studio then. Closed off in the studio I could forget about my life outside for a while. Rosemary was a mentor and an angel to me, she was the very first person who believed in me as an artist, and she gave me a book that changed my life. That book was "the Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron. Which I highly recommend even though it led to the painful discovery that my life was not what it seemed, most of what the book said could happen, did happen. But, it started me back on the right path. Which directed me back home, in every sense of the word.
I tried going back to find love where I had left it, but it had gone. So in 2002, broken and bruised in more ways than one, instead of moving to Atlanta where my family was, I moved to Nashville, by myself. To start a new life.
Now it's 9/11/11... Here I am looking back over the last ten years, and thinking about what I want the next ten years to be about. I happened across a candle in the closet tonight called "Love"... I had it for years and never burned it. I got out the "Love" candle. I got out my bible. I said a prayer and watched it burn. I prayed for my heart to be open, I prayed that I will find love, I prayed that people I love are happy, I prayed in God's name and in His will these things for my life.
I got out my guitar. And I finished a song called "the River". And thought back on the ten years since my life was forever changed. And I thought about Love. I have felt that ticking clock again in the last couple weeks. Something I haven't felt in a while, but something recently made it all start swirling up again. Maybe it's just time that I let that go for good and set that love free... How can I find a love in the future if my heart is tied to the past? I know I can't do anything, but in God all things are possible.
"If love is but a space in time, suspended by the heavens between two stars, let me find that love again. I tried going back to the place where I had left it but it had gone. I tried to follow it, I tried to wait for it to come back, but it did not. I will set it free."
The last ten years for me have been about "change"... Looking back, I would say I had to crash, literally and figuritively, and lose EVERYTHING I had, to be able to let go of my own will, and trust in something bigger. To be built on a rock, from the soul up. I wouldn't want to redo the last ten years, but they led me to the best thing I have ever done. Giving up and redirecting my life to Jesus Christ. He saved me and anything and everything good in me and in this world is His. That is at my core, that is my North Star, He is the light to my feet.
So tonight, 9/11/11, my wish is L O V E... THAT is what I want the next ten years to be about.
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