Prayers and Epiphanies: The Collection, by Melanie Jean Burke

One woman’s journey, discovered within a collection of seemingly random thoughts and experiences.

Preface to The Collection [Jan 4th, 2013]

My mind runs on overload, and whereth the cup runneth over, my thoughts spew and splatter onto random scraps of paper, napkins, journals, or wrappers.  Whatever surface template is closest.  Never prepared, and always caught off guard, grabbing equally dysfunctional writing utensils, pens, crayons, sometimes borrowed, and on a few past occasions, I confess even swiped a pen or paper too.

And so there my thoughts have accumulated.  First in piles, then I would slide (ok more like stuffed) the piles into Ziplocs, which found themselves capsulized into plastics storage bins, only to travel a destiny of various storage units dragged about through multiple geographic relocations and downsizes.  Exhausting.  And overwhelming.  In downsizing my material life, they have yet again come to rest, and my abundance of thoughts have become self-evident.  NOW WHAT!?!

That has been the oddity of the peculiar cycle.  I would buy cute or artistic journals and notebooks in anticipation of some masterful composition, but these, too, remain baron and tossed in a storage boxes alongside its mishmash contents.  Perhaps it was the vast emptiness of the pages that paralyzed me.  The sheer reality that my daily thoughts are often suttlely scrambled with profound wisdom. To this day, I never know when the compulsion will strike with the genuine overwhelming sense of purpose.  My words always seem to find their comfort and safety of expression through informal and nearly illegible scribbles and scratchings.  But why hang onto these time weathered remnants all these years? Why drag them around at all?  For me, I felt some sense of dishonor, or negligence for disrespecting the gift of epiphanies in their disposal. But I was also increasingly frustrated with the reality of the ever increasing physical space they claimed.  I am still tripping over my last set of epiphanies!

My heart has carried a progressive ache with that ‘NOW is the time’ universal rhythmic beat.  But how do I set my lifelong collection of disorganized expression free?  How do I start?  Where do I start? AGHGHG! 

After much agonizing and discussion with those closest to me, and much prayer and meditation, the epiphany…. “that sudden realization of the obvious’…  it hit me.  The truth is, it doesn’t matter where I begin.  The only thing that really matters is that I just begin. Not so easy in practical applications, but I have decided to let go and get out of the way of my own desires to manipulating the outcome, trust my narrow scope cannot comprehend the natural flow of the seemingly randomness within its own beauty, and allow God’s Grace to transform my collection of clutter to useful purpose and deliver it to the recipients as divinely intended.

And so, today, I just begin. My life doesn’t fit neatly into a book.  Or a box.  What can I say…?  My thoughts still overfloweth!  I surrender trying to ‘write that perfect first book’, or dazzle others with self-proclaimed ‘self-help’ guides. 

I have come to accept my thoughts for what they are… purposeful, profound and timely expressions of God’s Grace flowing in and out as a counterbalance to a world which fills my mind with excess noise and clutter.  I see now, I compounded that disarray. 

God’s messages are not meant to be horded or stored in fear.  I must set free that which I held hostage, and humbly share my best and most personal life experiencing epiphanies as I received them…. in no particular order.

Since 2013, life got busy and I didn't finish what I started, at least not completely.  I have scaled down to my best life lessons, and now I am sitting down to embrace the process of digitizing them. 

So I begin again...  the final frontier... from pen to laptop.  And I am EXCITED! In connecting my epiphanies together, I know that I can inspire you to connect yours, too!

Here's the new membership if you are interested.  Prayers and Epiphanies, The Collection by Melanie Jean Burke.  May they bring you divine inspiration, comfort and healing as they have for me.

Godspeed, Melanie