I joked last night that I’m someone who is always going to circle back to the Labyrinth. It usually happens without me even noticing it as I write and then bam David Bowie has found his way into another one of my blogs.

And it seems lately all the words I’ve been writing are scarier than I like to deal with.

Today at church I desperately wanted to run. I felt myself wanting to not show up, to bow out and everything in between. I stayed knowing that normally my desire to run is actually the sign I should stay.

But, as I sat during worship and wrote I once again found myself replaying a scene from the labyrinth. When the main character Sarah at the end of the movie is trying to get her baby brother back finally from the Goblin King. She’s done all the tasks and she’s made it through the Labyrinth and now the Goblin king is toying with her and moving about and she keeps having to move her neck and change positions and try to keep finding him.

She can’t remember the final line of the story and I believe that he thinks he’s bested her.

But she takes a breath and realization fills her face and she says the final words of the story “you have no power over me”.

Normally that’s the place I get too but I realized today in church that I’m currently right before the moment of realization. I’m in a place where it feels like my mind is blank and I have no idea what the words that should come out of my mouth are.

I know that I know them but I can’t piece them together.

I’m a strong human. I’ve always been stronger than I give myself credit for. And today while walking to find a place to clear the cobwebs I had a little conversation with myself about strength.

Sarah in the Labyrinth didn’t realize what strength she had. She didn’t get that her whimsiness and her ability to see beyond what was, was actually strength. That those things and walking in who she was is what got her through the maze.

She was the only one who could have done that journey. And it wasn’t the bad things in her life that made her strong. It wasn’t the things that she went through that were her strength.

It was the things that she chose to keep and protect in spite of what was that were always her strength.

As I was walking here I was thinking about all the worship songs and sermons and what not I’ve heard in my life that strength can only be found in God. That in him my weakness becomes strength.

But what if all the things we thought “made us strong” were just the things that cover up where our real strength is. Where it actually lies.

It’s funny how there are lies and things that have been whispered in our brain for so long start to turn into our own voice.

Sarah was always told to grow up. To stop imagining. Her parents saw it as weakness, but instead it became what saved her. Her ability to dream and imagine.

The thing I hear in my own voice now, as much as I’ve tried to get it away from me is that I am a burden, too much and that I have to be an island.

It’s scary how quickly those things can flood my mind.

But, today pondering Sarah I wonder what strengths those are covering.

I pride myself in my ability to keep fucking going even when I’ve been absolutely inundated with grief and pain and health issues. Even when I can’t smile, I’ve kept moving.

And that’s what I’ve claimed as my strength.

But what if is covering up true strength?

Here’s the deal: there is a lot of evangelical statements that I’m 100% not ok with. But, I think that there are times where we forget we are all uniquely made and equipped; however you believe people came into existence- we are all unique. We all have strengths that have been in us since we were born- it’s just up to us to allow ourselves to find them.

I won’t mince words: my mental health has never bounced back since my mom passed. It was a pummeling of burnout and grief and now for almost a year dealing with this facial paralysis and unsteadiness. I’ve had some of my more scarier lows of my life in the last 5 months.

But, like Sarah, my strength isn’t what it seems.

My strength isn’t my ability to show up, or keep moving forward.

Those are all the reactions of things that have happened to me, that have been done to me, that I’ve had to deal with. I have made them strengths out of survival but they aren’t actually where my strength lies.

The things that have happened to us don’t make us who we are.

I don’t know right now if I’m ready to look at the goblin king and say “you have no power over me”. Right now, I don’t know if I believe it.

I do know this though: I will no longer give the darkness that has shadowed my life the credit for how strong I am. I’m going to choose to find the things that are actually my strengths, not the reactions to the dark things.

I was strong before them, not because of them.

Like I said a while back: when David killed Goliath, he didn’t prove it by carrying his head around.

He was the proof.

But he had the strength in him before he killed him, not just after.

The strength didn’t come from the overcoming. The overcoming came from the strength.

The strength was already there.

Right now, everything in my life feels like it’s covering the strength I need.

I don’t know how to distinguish between what I need to keep or what I don’t need to keep

I do know, it feels like I’m holding a key to a treasure box. Something that’s been covered for so long because I didn’t think it was there,

I thought I could only make diamonds from pressure- not that I contained them from the start.

So here is where I am this week, staring at the Goblin King as I await the words I need to find the strength that was there even before the journey.

I don’t know if you need the reminder that you already had the strength built in you like I did today.

But I do and you do.

With love,

Meg