Starting the week before my birthday, I floundered. The flu struck me down. Grief walked out of her space in the hydrangea bush and started holding my hand. Coughing fits robbed me of restful sleep.

I shifted from

Living to surviving. Just get through the day. Return home to the couch. The warm light tan couch that smells slightly of dog and my husband’s wool blanket. Try to concentrate on reading. Or writing. No. Just concentrate on getting through the chores and sipping hot tea until my body relaxed enough that I might sleep.

I waited. Waited for Grief to let go of my hand and wander back to the hydrangea bush. I waited for that intrinsic moment when my strength would return and with it my zeal for life.

I have been on spring break this week. And I have plummeted and charged through the days with a deliberate and wild abandon. Garden beds have been dug up and redesigned and replanted. I have kneaded and shaped two types of pizza dough and conquered the Art of peanut butter Rice Krispie treats.

I’ve power washed and resealed my concrete patio. I’ve wandered miles around my half an acre lot. I’ve pushed forward.

But I felt like I was in an airplane holding pattern. I traced circles around my yard and picked up sticks or pulled up weeds. I kept doing the activities I wanted to do and I completed them with enthusiasm and passion. But I still felt like brittle drift wood. Shoved to the surface. Deposited on the beach. Scorched by the sun. Not useless. Not useful either.

I went to my book club this evening. It still mystifies me that I was invited and much less joined a book club. I always feel like such a mismatched trinket in social settings. I meet with three other women and we are such a unique collective, and within this group. This thriving hive, we have found my place.

We almost always meet at this one woman’s home that sits atop a hill (I like to pretend that it’s a mini mountain). She lives on God knows how many acres of land, much of which has been converted into horse pastures for a non-profit she has been building. I love coming to this woman’s home. First of all, the drive up to her house requires driving up two steep hills that I never love accelerating my way up and down because they don’t remind me of roller coasters. No. I would never do that.

I also love driving past the different paddocks holding various members of this woman’s herd of horses. I love how each field holds different animals and how the afternoon sun backlights the fields, gleaming through the trees and stroking the horses’ backs. At times, I just want to ditch my car and the club and climb under the fences and sit in the fields and listen to the cicadas chirr while the horses graze on the tall grasses.

Most of all, I love my spot on the couch with the white throw pillows embroidered in multi-colored Escher style geometric patterns. I gave the windows. I face the hill’s slope toward the woods. I face the sun set and the rising night and the horizon plaited with stars.

Throughout the evening, I relax into my authentic self. I have cried in front of these women. I have shared dreams. Pains. I have read my writing to them. I have given them my snail shell secrets.

Over the course of many long hours, we gab. We talk about how he book for about ten minutes. We talk about our lives and how they intersect with the books or how they diverge or completely don’t relate. We talk with honesty and authenticity. And what’s special is that we don’t agree on politics or aspects of faith or whether or not one of the woman’s dogs is a two pack of cigarette a day smoker. I’m convinced the dog is. Her bark is raspy and guttural. The dog also doesn’t like me which means I have to be sarcastic because I love dogs and am quite affronted (I’m not) that this dog does not like me.

Tonight, we discussed the book Joey, a book about a blind horse being cared for at a Christian equine therapy farm in North Carolina. We all talked about the points when we cried. We thrilled in successes. We addressed points where the book over simplified problems and concerns the nonprofit faced.

But then we laced the book to the nonprofit our friend is building. And I felt the world open up at my feet. The holding pattern was ending. I was to land. Set my feet on a path that followed a long gravel drive that went up two steep hills that remind me of roller coasters.

My friend mentioned grants and grant writing. And it was like the Holy Spirit shoved me. Because I’m trying to do freelance work with an organization that helps with consulting and grant writing. Moreso, I’ve never really done volunteer work before. I didn’t feel called to it. I work as a teacher. Isn’t that enough mission and volunteer work?

I have taken a hiatus from writing because that zest for life was just suspended. But this evening, I found it. I found that need to write. To put poetry into play and write words that capture my listed. My perceptions. My experiences.

I also found the need to write for others. To push my ability beyond writing for myself and open up that pink vulnerability to others. To my friends. To the world.

I’ve been struggling with finishing my work recently. Homeleaving is still only halfway done. I need to finish it. Not because I started it and then need to be a dutiful writer and finish it. But because I believe in book.

When we wrapped up the evening, I stepped outside and stared at the western horizon. A brilliant star hovered just above the tree line. A single brilliant beacon. A single bit of light within all of that darkness.

My father-in-law gave me a bookmark I have on the end table next to me. It is inscribed with a quote from St. Francis of Assisi: “All the darkness in the world can not extinguish the light of a single candle.”

I left my friend’s house imbued with purpose. I got in my car, swung around, called another friend and drove too fast down the gravel roller coaster hills because I love that thrill.

What I loved even more was pitching my friend’s consulting company (that I’m hoping to do freelance work with) to work with my other friend’s nonprofit. And I could feel my sense of purpose rise. My zest for life awakening. My passion to do more than circling the holding pattern reignite.

I have a purpose. Let’s start writing