My Life is Menstruating

I feel like my life is menstruating right now ...

Stay with me folks...

I feel like the discomfort and agony (which is not unfamiliar because it reoccurrs) is because I'm releasing some things from my life in preparation for the next phase of this journey.

I feel like the egg has run it's course--certain experiences, certain relationships, and certain conversation topics have run their courses--and now it's time for me to, in gratitude, release it... and I'm in pain...

and it's a beautiful agony...

but still agony...

And still beautiful

because cycles are essential.

I wonder how many people fight releasing to avoid the agony of menstruation?

Or because we don't trust the cycle?

Or how many of us have yet to find the beauty in the cycle as a God-ordained essential part of life?

There have definitely been times in my life when I've fought the process of release. I can think back on some decisions I made two and three years ago that might have been better formed had I been honest with myself and others about my agony and discomfort sooner--had I not tried to hide my cycle. I didn't have the language for it back then. Perhaps, like many of us, I was too busy being busy that I neglected attending to the cycle.

Every menstruation has felt like death.

There have been seasons of my life where I've been curled up on the bathroom floor cursing God, begging God to take the thorn out of my side. But now that I understand that it's a cycle, I know there's something on the other side of the agony. Such are the transitional seasons of life. What gets us through the anguish of transition is the promise that lies within the cycle.

So #trustthecycle. Menstruation is a part of life. I'm learning to allow more time to get in touch with it. I feel that when we choose to fight the release--when we hang on to things longer than we need to--the outcome of delayed release is uglier than it needs to be. The anxiety prompted by the agony exacerbates an otherwise rudimentary and routine part of life. Menstruation is a part of life. When we allow space for ourselves to understand this, we begin to understand the transitions within it. We make peace with the pain that comes along with it. We push through it because we know from experience that this, too, shall pass.

So, I'm praying over the cycles in your lives. I'm not just praying that you will get in touch with the cycles; I'm praying that you learn to embrace the release--the discomfort, the agony, the recurring pain--alongside the beauty of the promise that waits on the other side.

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