Sky Among Shadow

Overnight, this Midwest town transformed to a winter land. The sun will melt a few inches throughout the day, but  unwelcome nonetheless as we edge into April.

I hear them calling from branches, those messengers of warmer days. But the birds are all confused: which is it, snow or spring?

This crazy weather makes miss Kansas City, where every day was a guess as to what it would be like. I miss the growth that carved itself in me. I still feel like there was so much more to explore, so much more to become. I did not feel my time was up. But God moves in mysterious ways, and I had to embrace the wind that had already begun to sweep me away.

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My whole life I’ve been afraid to settle. Terrified of lowering myself to minimal. Of striving for the very best I’m meant to make of life and find out I didn’t quite achieve that level, make the cut.

When I was navigating what would become of this next season of life, I did not want to find myself back in my hometown, because I was terrified I’d slip back into the old ways of life in this slow, decades-paved pace of life. To have stretched my spirit and grown into another person—deeper, wiser, eyes open to the wide world around me—only to snap back to the beginning, go through the motions and get caught up in the bubble of middle-class suburbia.

Well, here I am. Back home. When I asked for any and everything else, God gave me a Great Lake and a job to build from the ground up.

To settle is the absolute worst destiny for me. I do not want to turn back as I look on my life and wonder, What if? Where did my hopes go? Where died the dreams I draped across my heart to heal the world?

Water drips down the covering outside our center, late afternoon sunlight glares off the wooden tables in the window. A stillness when the kids are gone. A slow revelation of life just as I feared, but a fight in me to make it different. ///

How do I settle when every bone in my body fights against the notion? Resign to monotony, day in and day out, drudgery that depicts what’s contrary to what God has reassured me of time and time again.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been set upon a voyage doomed to fail. Is there room for sky among shadow?

How do I be real with myself and voice my deepest fears? How can I be honest without regretting my current situation that is, as ungrateful as I may appear to be, seasoned all over with grace?

There is so much of my life I haven’t expected.
Like a crazy winter storm in the middle of spring.
So much unanticipated, to stare in the face and say is mine.

Right now, I feel pretty weak in these times of uncertainty, clinging to what little of hope for abundantly more that I still hold in my heart’s pocket.

I look up from my table, where papers and notes are spread before me. The café is full of light.

There is no room for shadows. Only breaking open of sky. Green splashed against the wall, canvas of color line the room. Silver espresso machine gleams with its newness. If I slip close enough, I can catch the lake blue of my eyes reflecting back, studying me.

How do I keep my head and my heart straight up?
Stand in the sun. Stay in the Son.

Choose this day to believe that I am heading towards the best of life. As a cherished one of God, there is no other destiny.

In the midst of the sorting of seasons yet again, it’s all I can do to take one breath and turn it into a prayer of surrender, of obedience with a trusting heart. A trust that chooses to take today, full of snow and the unexpected, and keep hope alive for spring.

Because it’s coming.

Because I can wait.

Continuing my attempt at the Five Minute Friday weekly writing challenge. Five minutes to write on the assigned topic. Raw and unedited. (Yikes!) This week’s topic: Settle.   /// symbolizes where five minutes started and stopped.