THE GIFT OF EMPTINESS

I am many things. I say this because not only have I been called many things, I look in the mirror and see many things. Let me tell you something about me – I love to save people the trouble by calling myself the many names I can be called. I am ditsy. I am giggly. A bit eccentric and also a bubbly airhead. Hold up! Before you go screaming bloody murder at the fact that I am insulting myself, may I highlight that this is not self-degradation. Rather, these are the words of someone who is self-accepting. You see, I am not perfect. And to be honest, I do not want to be. Because my beautiful imperfections ring clear in my ears reminding me daily that I owe everything I have to a God who has been faithful enough to love me despite all odds. A family, gracious enough to put up with my nuances and friends I honestly do not deserve. I do not deserve my friends because they tolerate my ability to go AWOL for long stretches at a time and come back like I smell of roses and they are all bees. Naa! I ain’t rosy and my friends certainly aren’t bees. But for reasons I can never explain, they put up with me and whenever I resurface, pick things up from where we left them. Today I sit and stare at my wall, plagued by a grave promise I made to myself. Today I promised to die empty. I want to empty myself of all that I have. All that I own and all I will become. I owe it to the world to leave everything that I am. Touch a life. Bless someone. Today I say out loud that which I have always whispered in my heart – I will die empty. And before you go off thinking I am having the New Year blues, far from it. I thrive on emptiness. Pouring out and giving myself to the things that colour my world one small action after another. To know me is to know my empty. To love me is to let me be empty. Hi, I am ditsy. Sometimes eccentric, doing the silliest things and walking around with my head in the clouds, and today I give my gift of emptiness. I am empty.