There is a storm rolling in. Oh, what this means for my heart as very often the weather mimicks how I feel inside.

With the windows and doors open I can smell the rain about to deluge from rolling grey skies, the air just dropped about ten degrees *I am a human temperature detector. I love this moment, the sweet stillness right before the storm. So I steel myself and wait for the heavens to pour, wondering this time what is awaiting my heart. If I must face it, let it come.

I’ve been so quietly pondering recent days, so too the past ten years of my life. The stories I’ve written on the pages of time, the love I’ve made and the children I’ve come to call my beloved. From rubble I’ve risen, and to ruins I have crumbled, all while trying to heal from wounds of my younger years. It has not been an easy path to walk, alas I know that I must follow it and keep my wits about me, though the hardships have been many.

As the sky darkens and I breathe in the sweet dirt on the wind, it brings me to so many spaces in time, little pinholes of light in the tapestry where I’ve smelled air just like this, though I was living a completely different life. I adore how scent can rewind the tape, and I sit here contemplating each chapter, and how it has led me to where I am today.

So many I’d rewrite, if I could, including the present lines on this page – the hidden pain in between the words I do not say. We cannot and so I have learned to love the story, even the parts I do not wish to read again.

I wish it would just start raining now. I intend to sit and let it wash over me, though the air is cold and falling fast, I want to feel alive for just a moment. A child in a rainstorm, a young woman walking home from school, dancing in the rain with my love, running fast through downpours to get kids to school, sitting under a porch in Panama… so many moments, I’ve smelled this air, just waiting for a storm.

I am grateful, for all the moments of my life. I am grateful that a storm is coming may it be gentle to my heart but good for my mind, further washing me clean in the surrender of letting what is, be.