My Secret Place

For the past seven months, and surely for the last three, I have been keeping a secret.  Not a dirty little secret. And certainly not an Xscape kind of thing where nobody has to know. Every night for sure, and in the day, as I can, I go to this secret place...of sorts. Right before I close my eyes at night and settle down to sleep, I go to my fantasy world, that was once a real place. I really have not discussed it with anybody, but everyone should know about it by the way I converse. It is a place that still exists in my memory, but I try to make it present, real, and kinesthetic in every way possible.  How do I describe it? Hmmmmmm

At church...deep into my thoughts

It is a  place between what feels like The Chronicles of Narnia and Alice in Wonderland. Just like in the movies and books (minus walking through the wardrobe or falling down the rabbit hole) it's a place I go to escape and live in a completely different world that only I know about, and can feel. It has familiar creatures; situations and challenges I must overcome; and countless adventure!

Each time I enter my secret world, I learn something new about myself.  I tend to gather more information for the next time. Yet, it is unfortunate when I have to depart. Sleep overtakes me, and a new day must be experienced...and I seem to move further away from the memory, the reality, and the experience...this is why  returning to the secret place is imperative.

I turn over to a slumbering husband who has to go to work in the morning. Then, reality sinks in and I think about how I should have gone to sleep hours ago so I could surprise him with breakfast. This secret is keeping me from being a good ole #southernwife SMH  However, I can and do cook...LOL :)

One of the first dinners I made after coming home from deployment...your girl can burn!

Needless to say, I have always had a vivid imagination. Just because I am 29 and married does not mean it is going to stop. So, I would rather not apologize, and go back to my daydream, because it is more fun. It has more intrigue. And I feel the passion within my person returning. I am revived. I am whole. I am at peace.

The secret place is this:  I am roaming in the wilderness by myself and led by my own choices. Like Catniss Everdeen, I volunteered. I knew it may be dangerous. No one told me I had to go. No one gave me a map, compass, survival kit, shelter, or company. I went because I wanted to. I left because I had to. The world was too cruel; too difficult; too confusing; too passion-less; too boring. Yet, unlike Catniss, I did not go to save others. I went to save myself.

In many ways, I see myself as Hagar. Living in captivity with people who use her for only what she can produce through her colored, gendered, and classed body...she leaves. She runs away with no desire to return. I'm talking about heteropatriarchial normativity here...not my family.

In the wilderness, which is my secret place, I end up doing much of the same thing. I meet God through my own theophonic moment. God finds me, and I find God. el roi, or "the God who sees" provides sustenance: food, water, family, peace, passion, desire, hope, and healing. During this journey I find myself also encountering the imago dei in others, at times experiencing prophetic dissonance and having to rearrange my stoic epistemological categories. Some ontological disposition ensues, but it is fun all over again.

Monday Fun Day at Souq Waqif!

This time last year, I was in the most magical place serving as an Air Force chaplain. Nothing was right. But everything was perfect. Sharing in the discovery of God's grace in the midst of hell and high water with family formed out of necessity was one of the sweetest experiences I have ever had. And while I am glad to be home, my secret is that it is still taking me a while to contend with what home now is. It is so different with how I left it. Loved ones are gone. Others are ill. Haters only skipped town to leave shattered glass, confusion, distrust/mistrust, and division. The world is even more evil than I left it.

So, at night, my imagination goes wild with random memory and recreating possibilities of those times lived in reality, but brought back in secret---lest someone think me crazy, PTSD stricken, and sad. No. I am not sad. But in secret, in that place is where I felt closest to God. Traveling. Wandering. Walking in the wilderness until God finds me. A breath of fresh air. The unfamiliarity of this world is gone, and I can breath again in the hot, humid, sand-filled air of another Arabian night.

Taking in the Arabian Peninsula and all that is Doha