Saying Goodbye to Myself at My Own Burial

November 3, 2013

In just about 60 hours from now I am going to be going to one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been since I have been living in Minnesota. This is not just a beautiful place though. It is the place where after the longest and most insane 40 years into and through the wilderness that I have known as “life” that I am going to be laid to rest. It is in this magical fall kissed forest where I am going to be buried beneath one of the 3 bridges that were built long ago so that there would be a way to cross over the water that flowed throughout these amazing wooded hills.

I find it amazing that where the water once was is now dried up and the only thing that remains are the dirt paths within the winding trails that have been carved out of the landscape over time. At first I thought that they were just part of the walking trails that have been made by all who have spent time back there throughout the years; until we came to the bridges at the very bottom. It reminded me of a scene in the Movie Bridge to Terabithia, only there was nothing there but the bridge. It took my breath away.

Immediately I felt that somehow this would be the place that I wanted to be buried. I was talking with my friend Chene and she had said that it should be somewhere that the “old” me would go that I would not. Then it hit me. The old me was always somewhere else. Just as with “water under the bridge” symbolically, I am celebrating that I am the bridge and that all that was before is now under the bridge. I am who I am, because I was who I was.

It is amazing to me that for the first time in my life I am complete. I am whole. I am no longer trying to become someone else. I am alive for the very first time, and it is because of everything that I have grown up experiencing from the moment I was conceived that I have been shaped and formed by the waters of adversity. I have been remade! I have died, and I have been reborn.

Walking through the woods and seeing the emptiness that was once defined by where the water once flowed I felt the echoing sound as I walked in the woods and then stood upon the bridge. As I looked down, it was bone dry and had been that way for only God knows how long.

Yet, my heart could almost hear the water rushing gently throughout the hillside divide as it made its way effortlessly under the bridge. I scanned the dried winding pathway starting with where I stood and traced it back as far as I could see when I realized that this was not another part of the walking path, this was the bedrock, the foundation that once housed and carried the water so long ago. What was left, was nothing more than the shell, the imprinted remnants of what used to be. This is why I am here. It is here who I always was will be buried and rest. I honor who I was, and now, this will forever be “under the bridge.”

I have been poured out, drained and emptied of the life that once called my body, this shell of humanness, home. I have been carefully cleansed and restored by the hands of the Master and all those whom He continues to place within each step I take from inception to completion in every thought, idea, dream, hope, and plan; and together we do this again and again. These are refining moments. I am the clay, and His hands continue to shape me, strengthen me, temper me, reinforce all that has been done throughout every step of each process, and it is through the heat and fire of adversity and affliction that I am purified. I am His.

Without all that I spent my life choosing, none of this would be possible. The road has been long, and the wilderness I have known to be called “my life” has been the training ground that has brought me here. I have battled back and forth with the question that used to torment me because without fail, it reminded me of all of the “woulda, shoulda, coulda’s” which always sucked me back into the past. I was a hostage in my own body, trapped within the dark recesses of my own mind and inescapable, lifelong regrets.

Still, I have asked myself over and over again the same question that only recently has allowed me to accept the answer, the truth and the key. I spent my life searching for the answers from everyone else, and in every place imaginable except the one place where they have always been. Everything I have been looking for and desperate to know has always been right here within me, waiting patiently for me. What I have discovered has set me free from myself and the illusion that there was ever anyone else that was the “problem” or the “answer” within my life. I have always been both. This is what has made today possible for me to do and to share with you, with all of my heart.

This past year has been the most significant of my entire existence. It was also the year that was unimaginable for me because I could barely look a day or a week into the future without feeling dread and the bait of hopelessness; the thought of a year seemed like a lifetime of eternities. Yet the old adage that says good things come to those who wait rings true and that continues to transform me from chrysalis to metamorphosis…every time! I have learned that waiting is more about rest and preparation in the stillness and that waiting is not synonymous with being idle. I continue to learn that being still is one of if not the most valiant acts of courage I can do for myself for it is this process where the refining is redefining my character.

In the movie Mulan Christina Aguilara sang the song “Reflection” and as I think about this bridge where I am finally giving the greatest gift I believe is possible to give to myself. I am finally able with the heart of heaven and the light of love, to give the greatest gift of all to the girl, the woman I used to be.

She gave her life for me so that I could be here now. She is everything I am not, and I am everything she ever dreamed was possible and continue becoming so much more because along the way we realized that the sky never was the limit! I was always looking for someone else to make my dreams come true, and what I have come to realize is that there was nobody else who could give this gift to me but myself. My gift is that of honor, peace, and forever rest. I honor who I was for lighting the way and showing me how to never give up. I honor the prices that have been paid, and the lessons finally learned that were seeds in the soil of my life. Those seeds are eternal and the harvest is endless.

Who I was dragged me from one end of the spectrum to the other and back again and again. She finally slowed me down enough to find the will to discover what love really is and live the only true love which is Jesus. She refused to let me quit because she was not going to have her life lived in vain. She was my greatest cheerleader because it was in her negativity and fear ridden panic that I was brought to life. It was in her devious and underhanded lack of character that I have emerged honest, authentic, and willing to stand accountable for everything that we did throughout life.

Every time we spiraled so deep into the abyss, it was the weight of choices and unwillingness to come face to face with all that we had done and those we had been hurt and destroyed through our choices. We were sick, and broken. We were never alive even when it felt like it. She chose with everything she had to face me and it is her strength that has shown me how to choose because she always wanted to live, just not that way anymore. In this journey, I have learned to love her and have stopped trying to wipe away her existence and the memories that I have spent my life trying to forget.

I have gone back and forth with what I am hoping for in having a memorial gathering to bury the me I once was, and I wanted to make sure that I was not doing this for the wrong reasons. At first I didn’t know I cared. To be honest, it was a chance for me to say goodbye to all that I “was” and never look back. Yet, I am the girl, the woman who suffered many deaths and I am the girl and woman who has been brought to life as if for the very first time. The old me is the foundation of everything that I am built upon. To remove her is to remove me. I see all of the pain and torment that she took in my place, and my heart breaks for all that she and I lived through. She became the darkness within my being that made the reflection possible. For that, I am forever thankful.

When the Lord created us, He created a whole…the light is undefined without the darkness. It is there in the thickness of night where the colors, hues, and illuminating light shine brightly and light the way. She is my heart, though no longer my life. I honor her journey by living my own now, with her sacrifices and the strength to make them without becoming hardened by the pain have become interwoven within the fabric of love that is my heart, my soul, my spirit, and my being. I am certain that this is possible today because no longer are we two, but we have become one flesh. I am no longer at war with the “me” I used to be. I am today because of who I was then. 


I look down over the railing of the bridge and still there is no water. There is no reflection staring back at me and now I know that it is because I am the living reflection, the proof of infinite possibility in an impossible world.

Elizabeth Marie Walker- November 5, 2013