joy in coming out of the basement

A friend recently had an apt comment from another friend. She explained how she is going to house sit for the winter instead of staying on in a basement apartment. The friend said "It's about time you got out of the basement. You've spent most of your life there. ". It was so true. The first friend has spent so many years in turmoil and self-abasement, and now she is beginning to blossom. I could identify. My journey has been a bit more up and down, but still with lots of time in the basement. And in this season that I have been sharing with my readers and friends, I have become very familiar with the basement of my heart. These days when I am finally getting some long left sorting done in the basement I think a lot about such images. While my journey has been a necessary one, to bring greater order and understanding to my life, as well as to my physical basement, it has been messy and heavy and difficult, and often hard to face. Just as I have had to take God with me into the physical basement with praise music or prayer, He has been my constant companion, sometimes unacknowledged, on this inner basement journey. I am making our physical basement a beautiful place, with a room for all to enjoy for recreation, and a studio for my girls and I to share for art, sewing, writing, pottery, adjoining my husband's workshop, and looking out on the garden. My own inner basement is more ordered and much less frightening. And I find too that I enjoy coming out of it more too. I can more easily let go of the preoccupations with inner struggles, and join once again with the concerns of others about many things. Not that I couldn't before. In fact I spent so much time doing that for so many years that I needed to tend my basement, look at my own struggles, because I was neglecting many inner needs. Because I have been able to tend and sort my own heart, without judgment and with God's vision and love, then I can more easily embrace the struggle of others. Last night we watched Shake Hands with the Devil, the story of Romeo D'Allaire's struggle to deal with the catastrophe in Rwanda in 1994. We have a lot of connections with East Africa, so it is familiar territory to me, and our own traumas in Uganda make me feel their traumas even more. And there have been times lately when I didn't want to see that sort of film because of the traumatic memories it would awaken in me. But last night I embraced this story again, and particularly liked the way the film allowed us to understand D'Allaire's reaction to the trauma, the aftermath for him that drove him to the brink, the help he received through therapy, etc. I particularly appreciated hearing the lightness in his voice in the commentary on the film. He was free, and I could hear it in his voice. He had come out of the basement. I am enjoying that freedom more and more, so that I can go back and forth into my basement as I need to, and even enjoy it, without fear and without struggle.