Valiant Warrior

There’s this part in Moana where she is walking toward the lava monster and I froze a frame of all this ash and embers coming off the monster and Moana was determined and unafraid.

More often than not I think I’m the lava monster. I am a hot mess. Things are flying off me, from me, and at the people around me. I deal with high levels of pain on a regular basis. The thing is that I’m really used to it these days and so my bad days, ugh days, don’t talk to me days, good days, and occasional great days are all melded into me now. I don’t have control over how I’m feeling and sometimes not much control over how I’m reacting.

I rock the lava monster look on a regular basis. My hair may as well be on fire for all it’s doing for me, my face includes a hodgepodge of pain and occasional makeup, leggings are glued to my lower half, bralettes hold back the fire from reaching my shoulders, and my hands are almost literal balls of magma.

It’s a hot look.

And in the middle of an all out meltdown, God comes to me and tells me that He knows who I am. I am not my pain. I am not my limitations. I am not my blood work. I am not my fears, doubts, anxieties, weaknesses, or my shame.

This is not who you are. I know who you are.

You are the strength that has overcome, the humor that has laughed when you could have cried, the eyes that have held back the floodwaters, the arms that have clutched your body trying to keep your heart from ripping apart, the slow breath in that promises a slow breath out, and standing your ground against the howling winds and pouring rain of life.

That is who you are.

As much as you have endured and survived, seen and heard, and felt, and as much as you have tried to avoid the pain, you inadvertently ignored your own strength.

You may have grown up thinking you were not a strong person, but after facing the pain, grief, loss, and existential crises that you have, you have to admit how crazy strong you really are.

A weak person would not have come out the other side of all this pain a more compassionate, gracious, kind, loving, valiant warrior.

A weak person didn’t come out the other side. You did. You are one of the undefeated.

I’m really proud of how strong you’ve been

and

how you haven’t lost yourself amidst the pain.

Sincerely yours,

The Undefeated.