It has been awhile since I have written anything.  Earlier today I read over something I had written over three years ago and I was caught off guard with how much it still resonated with me; how I was actually inspired by it.  God was at work in me that day and it spilled over into my writing, something that I love to do. As I reflected on that I returned to a thought that has not been far from my contemplation lately – I am doing too little of what I love to do.

A couple of weeks ago I sat in a spiritual director’s office, embracing the silence and space he provided, and wept as all the dissonance and turmoil settled and I came face to face with God who was ever ready to listen to everything I had to say, yet I had such little to say. I can’t put words to so much right now.

I know that God is at work.  I know a deep – very deep – peace that I cannot explain, even as I also know an ache, tension, sense of loss, and uncertainty to degrees I have also never known before.  How is it, that in the midst of that, I know I am right where I am supposed to be? How is it that feeling these things actually seems right to me; that for me, they are evidence of life at work, shaping and forming me in ways I cannot describe yet know are true?

Today, the journey was accentuated as I ended up face to face with someone I had not seen for awhile and miss so much.  It was a connection I had been longing for but did not expect; in fact, I had every intention of avoiding it as much as I could believing it would be unwanted by that someone.  Then, when it came, I didn’t know what to do with it and I found myself disoriented and flustered, challenged long afterwards to think with focus and be attentive to what was present to me.

In this, I am reminded that so much remains unsettled within me; also, so much has died within me over the past three years.  This is not a bad thing.  It is a dying that makes room for life to have a greater say in and through me than what it has had in the past – “unless a seed falls into the ground…”; echoes from the other that make sense to me in a very personal, life-giving way.