Waiting in the Wings

Happy New Year. I missed it all in the flurry of holiday parties and cold nights curled up with that man I love so much. I've been feeling guilty, almost, about not being present here. It's that journalistic urge to archive and document. It gets upset when I let the moments pass undocumented.

But I wanted to forget all that for a while and just live.

I wrote this after some time spent poring over the beautiful soul that is Sarah Koller. Her words woke up my muse again.

My resolution this year is to be real. Normally, I would hesitate to post this ... but it is about as real as I get. I won't hold that back.

~*~*~

I am a bundle of unopened potential.

So often I look at myself as a butterfly still encased in her chrysalis, her wings still knitting together bit by bit, cell by cell. The process, the waiting, it's all painstaking. It makes me want to MOVE.

I don't want to wait. I want those wings, here and now, today. There is a place for me, a ministry, and God pulls with such vigor on my heart that all of me aches to GO.

But I can't. Not yet. I need to still the longings that threaten to burst out of my seams long enough to realize a bit of truth. I am living with my head, my heart, my soul engaged in a moment -- a version of myself, even -- that hasn't been born yet.

 I ache for Wife. I ache for the moment when I can do more than sit and watch two separate and separated lives unfold. I am restless with My Life and all its beauty because my heart is so invested in the hope that is Our Life.

I ache for Mommy, for the grabbing little hands at my skin and little smiles at my heart. Even if they aren't my flesh and blood, I want nothing more than to pour love out on little souls like water to flowers. I want to watch them blossom. I want to raise up love and joy and courage in young hearts, so that they can mend a little of this world's broken one.

I ache for youth minister and blogger and teacher and freelancer and neighbor and a million other things.

But along the way, I feel a bit of gentle urgency in my head, a little voice of reason in the midst of all that heart: "Do not forget today. Do not abandon now. Do not bury YOU."

Sometimes, I forget to be content with me. Content with my weakness and vulnerability. Content with a hair part not quite straight, a shirt that doesn't fit quite right, a sandwich taking 20 minutes to make, a heart not quite committed, a soul not quite convinced.

But that is Me. She is ME. I love her. I have to love her now, today. Not when I get to where I'm going.

Love, it grows. It’s knit together in that chrysalis, just like me.

I need to be patient. The little growth of today is in itself, at its core, a miracle. My days are a work of God's artistic brilliance.

The chrysalis is beautiful. Its fragility, its safety, its promise ... that is where I live today.

And even though sometimes I catch myself forgetting, I do like it here.