Lamar Howell's Weblog

Last month I registered a prayer in my journal. I asked God to let me be truly alive, to feel deeply and express that toward others, to love people and God like I should.

Here’s what happened. My swimming pool had been drained for about two weeks and I had gotten accustomed to it being empty. I cleaned it out, fixed everything up, then decided to fill the pool.

The day the pool got full, I went walking by it to check on my firebowl. As I saw the water in the pool I had the strangest sensation in my emotions, like a welcoming attitude toward the water, as if I had actually missed it. For an instant, the water was alive, it had personality, it evoked feelings in me. I felt that I was seeing an old friend again.

Does that prove that I am truly coming alive and able to fully feel again. I’m not sure. But I know one thing: it was something I had never felt before.

I’m sure a man lost in a desert would have fantastically alive feelings at the sight of water. Or a man coming home from a dangerous war battle would feel he had come back from the dead when he sees his family for the first time again. Perhaps a woman can feel truly alive after her first-born child takes its first breath and is laid on her chest.

Whatever makes me come alive, I want more of it, and I want to never tire of that thing.