Things I Protect

There's one thing I have that I protect: my _____.

I'm sure you expected me to say something like: my "heart" because that's what most people commonly go to great length to protect. They'll cut off friends and family and drink alcohol and have meaningless, empty sex just to avoid giving their heart to anyone...

...but me? I have something I guard and keep locked up more than aught else: my spiritual life.

Yeah, you've seen it.

Yes, you've even experienced it.

Those moments where I seem to know just what to say? That fountain of wisdom I seem to have a nearly inexhaustible supply of? The odd moments where I just seem to know things with no discernible reason?

Yep, all that and more is a functioning of things I protect and keep very tight-lipped about.

I don't really give it to anyone. I don't really allow many (if any) to share that part of my life and I can't even share everything about it. It's hard to even discuss... well, in words anyway. As you remember from an earlier entry, I learned to be afraid to share things that are truly precious to me.

That isn't to say I won't. That is to say, however, that it is few and far between and after a lot of testing that I am willing to open up about that. I can count on both hands the people that I feel I could share all of it with. The earlier parts some people were there to experience during my college years, but they don't know what drives it. It's actually all written down in a large notebook that I keep in a closet.

In that book is every single time that someone has given or passed a message to me that was prophetic. Those were said to me by different people in different places. Some I knew. Some I'd never met and have never seen or heard from again. All of them were accurate and timely and I have kept them all to remind myself of who I am when the time came that I'd ever need to revisit and remember.

It's in my closet right now. Those moments that those words came from were indescribable. It's tied to the reason my friend Miranda calls me a catalyst. There's something unusual about.... Well, something else I'll hush up about right now... See what I mean?

The thing is, I want to have people come along on this journey. I'm starting to feel like I've gone through everything I've been through and have taken terribly dark (to me) turns in life just to pick up a few people and now I'm being moved. I don't know what will happen to my relationships with people I've met in that time except for exactly one; that one will come along with me. The others may forget, may be mad, I may meet them again more fully alive and they might be critical of it because "they'll remember when..." and I have to make my peace with that.

At the same time, there's that inner part of me that, once diminished, is starting to demand more and more time and breathing space. In short: it wants to me to be fully alive...

...I think I'm okay with this, although I'm unsure of the path it will take.