A Promise

It’s in the shadows and the unknown 
where courage blooms and fears are undone 

A choice
To set our face like flint toward the tempest 
Where winds howl and doubts dance  

A spark
A passion
A reckoning within

I didn’t choose these murky depths
Where wounds are laid bare
A beacon for the night creatures to feast

The witching hour of the soul 
Is restless
Relentless

What holds me here?
Or am I held?

I can’t run from what’s in me
What’s of me 
Through me 
Or for me

Yet inside the chaos and the swirling storm
Rests a calm and tender shoot
A delicious foreshadow 
A promise

For “courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go;
it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.”*

* Quote from Alice Mackenzie Swaim

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Vanessa Sadler is a trauma-informed Spiritual Director and Enneagram Specialist. Through her company Abide (@abidinginstory), she collaborates with clients who seek deeper abiding and a greater understanding of the ways they relate with God, self and others. Vanessa has Level I and Level II certificates in Narrative Focused Trauma Care from The Allender Center, located within the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and also offers Integrated Story Work to her clients along with a culture identity component.