I passed the head of a deer on the road the other day. There was no body, just the remnants of the decapitation on the roadside, a crow sitting on top pecking at the eyes. I could see the top of her spine, a large vein spilling out. I did not look away. I just noticed it. I saw every inch of it and I did not wince and I did not turn away.

People do this. I know they do. People can look and see. I can’t usually. I was the kid tricked into looking the other way because I would cry so long. I am the one who senses the subtle shift in a room. The way you looked at the floor. The way I wounded you. And I have the tendency to flight (there isn’t always that much fight in me). I’ve a tendency to head to my hill. Lately I can’t see you. Lately I can’t see the end of my nose.

I am an introvert with a profoundly extroverted life. Enneagram 4 wing 3. INFP. We don’t do well with the pace I can keep. I’ve no doubt that this season is for me. That every ounce of my gifting was called to this time. That every piece of preparation has brought me to here. But my heart is hardening under the pace. 

I know absolutely that when my heart moves from my senses, when I stop noticing, when I stop seeing the world in metaphor and myth that I stop any feeling. That my heart hardens. That I cannot feel a thing. I am hard on the man. Hard on my kids. I have a hard  time staying awake and a harder time staying asleep. I have a hard time hearing my God.

My God. He speaks to me in the noticing. In the really truly seeing. In the deep feeling. In the intuition and the instinct. He speaks to me in fine stories, the song of pine trees, the Word when I slow enough to really taste and see.

Tell me how it is one reattaches the severed head and the hardening heart? How is it you tie up the severed nerves and start again the beating of a hardened heart?

For me, there is only one way out of my dulled and bored mind. To slow. To see. To write it out. To hold a journal in my hands. To write out the daily. There are some people who I desperately want to be with and for right now…but I am in the process of stitching back together. I will be back soon.

I’ve joined the gorgeous Tara and her group of Storycatchers as we write out November. You will find me here more often as I do the hard work of finding my nerve (and voice…they are one).