Love Lifted Me

It’s a beautiful old hymn that I used to sing in church when I was a girl. I can still hear the tinny piano music and the voices of the sweet older ladies, earnestly harmonizing together to make a beautiful haunting sound on a Sunday morning.

Love lifted me… love lifted me… when nothing else could help, love lifted me.

This past weekend, while the snow fell and covered the roads here in my town, I got on a plane and went to Arizona.

Arizona, the land of warm red rocks and clear bright air. Arizona, where my heart often dwells in homesick nostalgia. Where mountains hold the land in peaceful saftey, and the sun shines down hard and hot.

I was excited – jumping-out-of-my-skin excited – when I found out I’d be able to go. The Lift Off retreat was a huge deal to consider, let alone ATTEND AT ALL. When I realized that I’d be MEETING PAM SLIM, and MEETING CHARLIE GILKEY, and probably HUGGING THEM BOTH, I could hardly contain my giddy anticipatory joy.

When I finally arrived, I immediately reverted to my shy, outsider, I’m-not-that-cool self. The self that doesn’t think she’s awesome at all, that believes she’s ridiculously awkward, and feels like an uneducated hick who doesn’t know how to use silverware. (Yes, I’m aware that none of that is true – but it doesn’t change feeling like it is.)

But then – I don’t know exactly when it happened, but it was probably partway through some shared laughter, or in the middle of one of the many hugs we all shared during the weekend – I suddenly felt loved.

I felt understood. I felt cared about, surrounded, and supported. I felt lifted up.

All my life, I’ve been the weird one. I read books and climbed trees as a child, and grew up on a farm while being homeschooled. We didn’t have a TV, and I played the piano for fun. My friends were few and far between, and most of them couldn’t relate to my way of being.

As an adult, I put aside wanting to do what my heart wanted, and did the things that were expected of me: I married early, started having kids, tried to learn housekeeping and billpaying and other wife-y stuff. When my first husband took off like the bastard he turned out to be, my world shifted in a huge way.

I learned how to be strong (like I already was). I learned how to find ways to make things happen (like I already knew how to do).

Years have passed since that first shift, and I’ve experienced many more. The most recent shift in my world was my entrance into that special club of entrepreneurs, those people who have their own businesses, who spend more time loving their work than they used to spend hating their jobs.

And then, I met a whole bunch of other people just like me. Fourteen others, in fact, not including Pam and Charlie. And I was home.

What I learned from the weekend cannot be summed up here, it cannot be bullet-pointed, and it sure as hell cannot be expressed in any coherent way except by my life and my actions and the way my world makes sense again. I met people who, by their love and their creativity and their innate them-ness, reminded me and retaught me that we were meant to live in community.

We need each other, and not just because we get lonely. We need each other because you can’t always see how amazing you are, but I can see it. We need each other because I can help you, but I can’t help myself – I need you for that.

Love lifted me this past weekend, and I won’t ever forget it. It’s part of me now, and it will always be woven into the fabric of my life.

P.S. I love you too.