Falling back...

I have a love-hate relationship with daylight savings time, especially that BS in the spring when Mother Nature (more aptly, corporate America) snatches an hour back from me. When we "fall back" an hour, like some other Americans, I'm conditioned to be a bit excited, feeling like I've gained something (back) or got over somehow. The truth is that time is time and, no matter how you shake it or spend it, it will fly by, nonetheless. No matter who is counting or taking note of the time, it is all running down on one watch. His watch.

One thing I've noticed in my own life is that this period of falling back has been more than a gifted hour of sleep; it has been a time of transition, a watershed moment of truth and emotions...for no reason. I don't even know if there's a connection, but since I've been here, that extra hour has never been as enjoyable as it was when I was young because I haven't been able to sleep through it (lol).

Try having an extra hour to wonder why (from your own deduction) why someone you fell hard into something like love with cheated on you (again, deduced) and stranded you on your best friend's couch until dawn. Dawn is a long time to wonder and cry when you have to see 1 AM twice...

Try setting back your clock only to sit reading by lamp light, half wondering how you're going to write three 20-page papers by the end of November and wondering why a relationship based on years of knowing and loving somehow lacks reciprocity...

Try being able to sleep through an "extra" hour while wondering brokenhearted why a friend that you shared so much with could shut down on you at a proximity too close to ignore...

...And this is just through 2009.

This year, in keeping with tradition, all emotional hell broke loose. But I did something different this year: I was able to enjoy my extra hour.

Not because I wasn't hurt.
Not because attempted to brush the "dirt off".
Not because I ran off into something else to spare myself.

I didn't have anyone or anything to fall back on but Jesus. After so much pain and so much openness in my past, he showed me over the past 11 months (I recommitted my life to Christ on Dec. 2, 2009 in "someone's" kitchen. I can share that story later...lol) to be vulnerable only to him. Men and women can only be as human as God made us, and to be human is to be broken, sinful, and selfish.

I have been hurt and I have done hurtful things to others--knowingly and unknowingly--during this time so I know that I'm neither bulletproof nor perfect. But the Lord, with prayer, apt attention, and faith in Him, helped me prepare myself for the storm this fall. I will admit that nothing that happened this time around was anything I DIDN'T pray for or about. The Lord has a funny way letting you know that your will is not His; your wants and plans are not His plans for you.

I definitely got a bit more than I bargained for this time around, but the truths that the Lord revealed to me were more than enough for me to recognize His love for me in place of devastation and confusion. At 1AM this year, perhaps both hours, I was on my knees in prayer, literally laughing, thanking Him for His mercy and the ability to be merciful. Forgiveness is powerful, especially when the person you need to have mercy on the most is yourself...

I would appreciate no comments on this blog. Just thought I'd share. Thank you. And be merciful...

Markeysha Dawn Davis
Doctoral Candidate
W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies
University of Massachusetts Amherst
(313) 318-1831
mddavis@afroam.umass.edu