Irony

 

Today would have been my 25th wedding anniversary.  Plot twist:  it's not.  It's just another day in April - but it is the day that I temporarily change my Facebook profile picture to the sweet moment before the wedding when my little brother wiped tears from my eyes with his tie.  I feel like that moment - perhaps the whole day - deserves acknowledgment in some small way. So the picture gets posted for a few hours.

The day was cool and rainy. Perfect.  Appropriate if nothing else.  Yet, I was grateful for a day to catch up. I found myself at home - indoors, singing aloud to a favorite song about His Blessing... to a thousand generations. I probably would have picked that song to include in the ceremony if it had existed back then.  But I digress...

It's been "a minute" since I've checked in here, and this isn't a story about my marriage.  It's a story about my walk.  

In the years since I've written last, I (We, technically) have built a porch, a garden, a greenhouse, an apiary and a life.  So much has changed and become new (yes!  It does spring forth, and I do perceive it!), and some things remain very much constant:  His presence, His provision, His care, His attention to details. His apparent love for just a hint of irony in my life.

And some things have come new... again. 

I'm back on my yoga mat regularly, and finding the Joy, presence, flexibility and challenge that yoga entails. It's once again a home - a safe place to explore and grow.  And Thursday nights are some of my favorite times on my mat.

As I was preparing to leave for class, I noticed the fish I'd ordered for my tiny-little-pond had arrived.  I opened the package and planned to drop them into the tiny-little-pond on my way out.  Plot twist: all dead. 

Now late leaving home, I rushed to the yoga studio, lay my mat in "my spot", and tried to be still in the few minutes before class.

Class started and we were instructed to close our eyes, and something else - honestly not sure what - and I thought "I am grateful for today".  And I am.  I'm grateful for the years, the experiences, the unanswered prayers. Grateful for freedom to choose and breathe deeply and trust that ultimately He will provide, and to experience "abundance" in a new way. And yet, a touch of mourning I'd been avoiding earlier was there as well.

We placed our hands - one on the abdomen, one on the chest - so we could feel the breath as it entered and exited our bodies. We were asked to notice what we felt. The instructor was talking about our breath.  I felt a warm tear roll down one cheek, and then the other.

"Dead fish.  Dead marriage.  Cute, God."  On my right hand, I quickly finger-spelled "i-r-o-n-y" (and briefly wondered the actual ASL sign for the word).

We were asked if we had any request for class:  poses, areas to focus on, etc.  Like young Harry Potter, as he sat under the Sorting Hat, shortly after arriving at Hogwarts, I thought "Not camel pose.  Not camel pose..."  immediately followed by a "not my will, but Yours be done".  I trust the place, the instructor, and His presence.  If the instructor feels lead to walk us through camel pose, so be it.  I could cry in front of these people. All good. (And nothing could be QUITE as spectacular as the post-camel cry I experienced early in my yoga years, as I was walking thru my divorce.  If I survived THAT - bring it on!)

I wiped my tears as surreptitiously as I could. We moved on.  Sitting on our shins and heels, stretching the quads. Leaning back, raise the hips...

"Holy hell.  We're gonna do camel..." 

And yet, we didn't. We did camel-LIKE postures: all heart and shoulder openers. Again on my hand "i-r-o-n-y".

Then warriors and balances, and some lovely flowing sequences made up of warriors and balances. 

I glanced at my watch - noted that time was nearly up. And then I hear: "Next, we're going to do camel..."

I couldn't help myself.  I looked up and to the right - the traditional position for God's presence from my interpreting days, and off of my right hand (and face), I signed "REALLY‽ "

Really.

And we did. I reached back, found my heels and kept my thighs as upright as possible.  Camel. Done. Without a tear.

Then into child's pose - where I met a giggle.  It's the "new thing" in my yoga practice these days:  giggles. Where I once shed tears and found less sadness, I now experience giggles and find more Joy.

Finally savasana: corpse pose - where one lays still as the dead (and my brain takes up the slack for the ever-so-quiet body).  "I am grateful for this day".  Tears again ran down my face and now into my ears. "Irony", I thought. He has made a way in the wilderness of my life.  And rivers in the desert, I suppose. My life feels lush and green, though, so....

And then another giggle with the thought of my kid returning home to find the bottle of dead fish on the kitchen counter where I left them in my rush out the door.