… and that moment a simple picture sheds a WHOLE NEW LIGHT ON TWO very simple words:

“CROW’S FEET”

Nothing I have ever survived or risen above will steal my truly blind faith in this Cosmos, as I believe with every shred of my being that regardless of what I think, say or do, there’s a perfectly purposed wheel spinning around me at all times. Like this picture, for instance, wherein some of you may just see “crow’s feet”, which, IS FINE! TO EACH HIS OWN! But I see something so much more than some random corvid’s scaly toes. I see a message from the Big Hand in the sky screaming out to me in living color:

Hey … YOU … REAL Cat! EVERYTHING really IS gonna be okay. Just take a look around at all these promises I’ve sent you.

If you’ve ever heard this song before, you may believe it’s from the perspective of a parent grieving the loss of a child. But the lyrics are open to vast interpretation, so to me it speaks of loss in general and the numbing process of letting go of someone you love and moving on. Within the collage of tattoos on my back is the crow from this song holding white balloons, which represents the final chapter of my life with Him and the beginning of the end of the mental illness I’d been living with for so long. It marked the death of the toxic relationships in my life (not the least of which was with myself), the loss I’d suffered along the way, and the birth of all that could possibly be waiting for me on the horizon. The song was to Him, and to me: “I’m burying this now and starting over”.

For years, I couldn’t hear this melody without ugly, gut-wrenching tears as I thought about all that I’d lost; The innocence of my childhood, my marriage and myself, my virtue, the first man who ever loved me and a child. But now when I hear it, despite what’s happened since? I sing it out loud, straight into The Cosmos, while thanking GOD for all the pain I’ve endured.

So, yes, some of you just see “crow’s feet” here, and again, to each his own! But after everything I’ve learned thus far, when I see this picture, I see an entire lifetime as I’m jaunted backwards through a maze of things I’ve loved and lost, then propelled into an eternity of possibilities yet to come. The God I serve has had loving control since before I knew my mother’s womb, and this masterpiece He’s been painting has both nothing and everything to do with me at once. I’m just a pebble in an ocean, with Light and dark, power and grace, and true magnificence swirling about me regardless of what I can see. Death really is nothing at all, my true Home is somewhere else, and this simple picture of the most beautiful crow’s feet I think I’ve ever seen reminds me yet again that I’m one very lucky girl!