moving to murky hope

this will be the last post on this site for me. i needed a fresh start, a new space. so you can find me at murkyhope.com. thanks.....much love,

kel

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wow. it has been a long time…. i feel like the my life has just hit a giant pause button. from the moment 5 months ago when we got the call that i had lost my father… life stopped. movement stopped. while thinking and ruminating didn’t, writing and blogging did. so much of life has felt like i have been going through the motions and trying to work out some of the most intense feelings i have ever had. grief has been hard on me. it has paused me.

somehow, i think being paused has been very good for me.

a few weeks back i was doing one of my yoga recordings that i taped before leaving new haven in a back room by myself. it was early. it was quiet. as i settled into the classes rhythm, i felt my body expressing grief and surrender with each vinyasa. it was hard, but the kind of hard that is good because somehow what is taking place on the outside actually matches what is going on in the inside.

on this particular recording peg was talking during a deep hip opener about taking moments to pause. sometimes, she said, we need to think of our lives like a bottle. filled with water, dirt, sand…and most of the time we are shaking it up. in the shaking everything loosens up and what once was stuck to the bottom all the sudden is flying around the bottle. yoga is a place where just for a moment we let that muck settle and become still enough to allow clarity in the water to surface.

5 months ago my bottle was shaken, rattled, undone… and sediment that probably hasn’t ever been lodged from the plastic edges of the bottle was jarred out, along with all the normal dirt of daily life… it was dirty. the water was so filthy. and the water and muck spun and spun and spun…

after this tremendous loss and shaking, it feels like that bottle was just put on a shelf, in a far away corner and left to spin, to settle… how things would land was unknown (in so many ways they still are). i felt left alone with the world spinning around me, dirt spinning around me. the inertia from the initial spin had stopped but the consequence of the jarring was still taking place… like when you get off of the twirling tea cups and the moment you step foot on solid grown you actually feel more sick than at the height of the ride.

life is beginning again. movement is taking place. there have been moments that the water has almost been light enough to at least know someday clarity will emerge. i am still very much allowing the muck to settle, the water is still murky and i continue to process this profound loss. grief still dwells in my soul and heart, but in many ways i am learning to live with it and let it change me…

…let it teach me what it looks like to move through murky water

…let it teach me what it looks like to pause and allow muck and mire to settle so you can move with clarity

…to choose not to let the dark sediment settle back down in the nooks and crannies of my soul but pray that in its spiraling it is broken down or maybe even taken out by a hand that cares about providing fresh water that i may thirst no longer

if this didn’t change me it would be a shame.

in many ways this blog is to say “i’m back.” in others, it is an intentional step towards choosing life, choosing hope even in the midst of water still swirling. this past 5 months i am learning even more what it means to trust in the midst of pain. to believe even when your own heart doesn’t have the strength. to have faith in the things that are not only unseen but dark and confusing.

to hope in the middle of muck and mire… so welcome to murky hope.

DISCLAIMERS:

1.) i won’t be using the alabaster jar anymore and my blogging world will now exist here (for those coming from the alabaster jar).

2.) of course i’ll write of kurtz family adventures, life in africa with a toddler, things i am learning about justice, jesus and redemption too but…

3.) i will write about “murky hope” because i want those that need it to know that even if the day feels like night, sorrow and pain feel like guests who drop in uninvited or your bottle has been shaken into a murky mess, hope is possible and even beautiful.

4.) to write about hope that exists in the dirt of life you have to talk about dirt…so i am sure this space will not always be pretty, perfect or shiny. which also means your dirt is welcome too…

5.) thanks for taking the time to be in this journey with me.