Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, sits toward the end of the long chain of barrier islands known as the Outer Banks. Legend claims Ocracoke as the home and hideout of the infamous pirate Blackbeard, and depending who you ask, the native families are descendants of that blackguard’s crew. That would make me a descendant of that blackguard’s crew for this perfect, long stretch of sand, sea grass, and cedar was home to my maternal grandmother’s family. For me this barrier island reverberates with echoes of home.
I arrived almost three weeks ago seeking silence, solitude, peace, and recovery from the storms that thundered their ways through my life over the last months and years. I came seeking answers and hope, seeking sparks to rekindle a faith that had burned down to mere embers. I took long walks through the village; bivouacked for hours on the beach mesmerized by waves crashing along one of the most beautiful beaches in the world; curled into chairs on the wide screened porch of my little cottage for long stretches of time.
I found silence, and solitude. I found hope, and began to see a rekindling of my faith, but peace eluded me. And as I am very much an over-analyzer, I delved oh, so deep into my own heart and soul until a realization dawned. I may have physically left the stressors far behind in the blistering Arizona desert, but I had wrapped and packed those emotional and psychological pieces ever so carefully in my suitcase and carried them the 2400 miles with me. The location had changed, but my heart substantially had not. Though not truly an original thought, this was a hit-the-floor-on-my-knees moment.
Truth shot an arrow into my heart: somethings I more than willingly surrender, willingly forget, willingly forgive others and myself. Other things, long held things, lie buried just beneath the surface, and all one need do is run their fingers lightly along those scars, and I bleed open those long held wounds as if they were fresh slices into my fragile human skin, frail human soul.
I’m not talking small, insignificant ‘you-took-my-parking-space’ things. No, I mean real, deep, wounds that no matter how hard I prayed, I couldn’t release. And when I gathered the courage to peer even closer, the things that drove the knife deepest and then twisted it hardest weren’t the things for which I can easily lay the blame at the feet of someone else. Instead, they’re the parts that I played, the roles for which I couldn’t forgive myself. I wondered how many times my heart could break for the very same things? How many times I could pray for forgiveness and still feel guilt? And, then something whispered to my soul Psalm 51: 1-2, 17:
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions, 2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. 17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.
Mere arrogance, believing I know better than God, kept me from accepting the grace that He had already given. Mere arrogance kept me holding onto the pain of my own past, my own sin. The thing is that the life (or lives) that I walked when those transgressions were committed no longer existed in His mind. He’d cast them away; and if He had, then I needed to do no less. I needed to let those lives and those transgressions with them sink their way to the bottom of the deepest sea and consciously choose (perhaps daily) to see my life as He did, see myself as He did. If He believed I’m worthy of love and hope and forgiveness, who am I to argue? And, having worked that out in my over-analytical mind, peace finally descended and settled upon me. It was time to allow Him to open the doors to a renewed life, one with room for good memories but no place reserved for the darkness of my yesterdays.
With that mindset, I trekked around the backstreets of the island today and found my great-grandmother’s house. The brown shingle-sided rambling house sits by itself in a meadow, and I could envision the generations of women who came before me sitting on the front porch, and the picture in my head made me smile. Those women wouldn’t recognize their sleepy, fishing village today, but their house in its meadow just steps from Silver Lake (or The Creek as they called it) probably looks much the same, and for that my heart was glad. Home should feel familiar; as I turned away those echoes of familiarity stayed with me, and I knew they’d be replacing the space that only hours before held echoes of darkness, held echoes of sin. Truly darkness replaced by The Light.
The Unexpected Life 