A Life More Beautiful Than I Could Imagine.
Heavy clouds mirroring the weight of my heart hung overhead as I laced up my shoes. Rain was coming, but the ache of loneliness had settled in deeply, and it felt like the only thing to do was run, so I took off up White Rock Mountain.
As my feet pounded trails that hadn’t seen work in years, I tried to clear my mind, but heartache clung to me like the vines around my ankles, tightening their hold as I pushed myself forward. It wasn’t just the physical strain of the run through overgrown trails and rocks, but the weariness of feeling unworthy that held me back. I had become consumed by everything I wasn't, all the ways I wasn't enough. Enough to be loved, enough to be wanted for more than my body, enough to simply exist.
As my mind was overrun with thoughts, my steps faltered. My breath grew ragged, and I stumbled, the rugged forest floor rising to meet me. Scraped, bleeding and with a heart breaking, I cried…. and cried… and cried. The sun's golden light began to wane, dipping lower, as if retreating from my pain, and in that moment, I felt it too, the descent into darkness.
I felt stripped to my core, as if life itself had carved into me with relentless precision. Peeling away each layer until only my marrow remained, I sobbed and gasped for air. Muscle by muscle, sinew by sinew, I was torn apart to nothing. I lay motionless, muscles weak, skin stinging where the earth had broken it open, but the deeper wounds, unseen, ached sharper.
The dirt seemed to welcome me, cool and damp, as if ready to absorb what life I had left. I imagined myself sinking deeper, becoming part of the soil. Tiny insects began crawling over my skin, settling as though I were already gone, my flesh part of the landscape.
Death called to me, or, more truthfully, I called to it. I lay there, aching to be consumed by the ground beneath me, my heart beating against nothing but bone, echoing through the trees and spilling out into the loneliness around me. I was so deeply and undeniably at the end of myself. Exposed. Miles into the woods, daylight leaving, rain coming, and as always, painfully alone.
My mind raced, laid bare to the elements, questions tumbling out with a kind of urgency I couldn’t contain: What was the point of life, of this pain? What was real? And why did I have to exist at all? What was I good for? It wasn’t being a wife, a mother, a woman. Every question pressed against the damp earth, my voice dissolving into the vastness around me, each word absorbed by the forest’s quiet. I surrendered to the stillness, letting the moment take me.
Rooted in the calm, I rested; yet before I could be entirely reclaimed by dust, the wind stirred, carrying with it a soft rain. Gentle drops fell like whispers of truth upon my skin. My strength renewed as the rain washed over me, and I rose to my feet. It felt as though every part of me was held, reminding me I wasn’t alone. The wind wrapped around me like a firm yet gentle embrace urging me to exist, not in fragments but wholly— just as I am. It was everything I needed all at once.
One foot in front of the other, I started running again, rain falling down my face where tears once were. I was lighter than I'd ever been. I felt like I could run forever. My legs carried me as my lungs breathed life, mile after mile, and finally, it all made sense. That pain, that struggle, it hadn’t been a punishment or an endless cycle of despair. It was a carving, a refining, a journey to uncover a strength I hadn’t known I possessed and to connect with a love I hadn’t realized was always there.
C.S. Lewis once wrote about pain, describing us as sentient paintings under the artist’s hand, feeling each brushstroke as a scrape against our soul. If only we could see the whole picture, we’d understand that each stroke shapes us, adding depth, color, and beauty that we can't yet see. It’s in our darkest moments that this invisible hand works, gently but decisively, transforming us. I understood now that my pain hadn’t been meaningless. It was a necessary brushstroke in the picture of a life more beautiful than I could imagine.
Since that day, I’ve come to see that life isn’t about being "enough" in the ways we often think. It’s about finding, in our most broken places, that there is a love and strength within us that can't be lost or diminished. It’s about reaching the end of what we think we are, only to discover that we are carried by something greater. A quiet, enduring presence that lifts us when we cannot lift ourselves. And if we trust it, if we open to it, it will guide us back to the fullness of life.
Wherever you are, however empty or broken you feel, know that the journey doesn't end in that loneliness or despair. Sometimes, we find our truest selves only when everything else falls away. And, in those moments, we discover a resilience and love that carry us forward, one step at a time, toward a hope and purpose deeper than we could have anticipated, to a life more beautiful than we could have ever imagined.
