Things just came crashing down this week. It was like something hit me, hard. I could even feel it physically (hense some sickness) but could only work it out emotionally. It seems that there has been stresses, that appear absent from daily life, yet function as a weighty essence that I carry like a yoke on my neck. And the yoke just snapped leaving a bunch of stuff on the ground and me looking down wondering what to pick up and continue on with. It is a new season of simplification in someways, saying goodbye to certain things while wondering if the ‘way I am’ is a constant posture that I just can’t shake. That is, am I always going to to be a bit restless? The answer is surely, yes—but what I am learning is that I have a deep desire to be restless for the right things. So things came crashing down and I am looking at whats on the floor, re-imagining and gathering the few things I am to yield as the summer begins. It was said by a great philosopher that the saint is the one who is able to “yield the one thing.”
It seems every time I have one of these existential moments—I had one last summer—I have to sit down and write out some names, relearn forgiveness, and start to love better. Nothing changes, but everything shifts. I do not say this to be nuanced only to point out that the dawn happens everyday—yet we see it newly. And I am seeing newly the people in front of me and therefore the world, I’m settling in my skin and therefore I’m planning a long ride, I’m opening my hands that I might receive and offer, I’m streamlining so that I might focus on those epic evoking wonders of the daily. The walks in gardens, celebrations, mentoring, creation, and bike rides. I am concluding, and those who can identify feel free—that I can’t manage it all but sense I’m not supposed to, nor was God ever asking me to. God has no desire to use us, only love. Rather than manage I am to handle the epic without hot pads. Exposing my hands and holding on.
