One year ago....

Lately I think about one year ago a lot. This photo was taken then. And I remember bedtime, night after night, the same, always the same.

And my single thought...

...brush your teeth, Julie.

Dragging my body toward that task, almost to anchor me to earth. I would tick off what I couldn't do...wash my face, floss my teeth, put on lotion. But I could brush my teeth, right before dropping into bed in my clothes from the day.

One night I woke. My leg screaming in pain, I crawled to the bathroom and called out to God...

....why, why, why?

A kind voice answered...

...my child, I am sad it had to come to this, but you would not stop. You would not stop.

And I knew it to be true, right there in my chemo haze. For in the harried middle of life I had barreled through days, squeezing sand from an hourglass, borrowing against my future.

But when my body utterly broke, I didn't have the luxury to ignore it anymore. In all that numbing fatigue something became crystal shining clear...

...you must stop and love and listen to yourself, Julie.

What you can do is enough. You are enough, dear.

And a happy little sigh would follow, every single night of tooth brushing, even in all that darkness and trouble. My sweet self had spoken...and I had finally begun to hear her.

Yes, if we listen, each one of us...

...we will discover times to strive and to seek and to have marvelous goals.

And then we need times to rest and be still, to say no, not now. But it is only us who knows what we can and want to do...and when we must simply fall into bed and say enough.

I have been enough today, we have been enough today.

For as Rumi urges, "There is a voice that doesn't use words. Listen."

Yes, there is a voice...and I hear her now.