Lead, Kindly Light

Last year at this time, a lot of my life had not yet been lived.

During the last seven days of May in 2007, I was in the middle of a week-long corporate training at work, playing something akin to “Let’s Make a Merger” with other twenty-something-year-old summer associates, all of us looking (and feeling) ridiculously out of place. We acted out our little grown-up lawyer scenarios in one of our firm’s posh boardrooms — perched on the fifty-somethingth floor, and outfitted with uninterrupted rows of floor-to-ceiling windows offering unmatched views of the City — but my inadequacy and inexperience made the whole experience remarkably akin to that of a dusty childhood memory of clunking around in my mother’s high heels as a seven-year-old lawyer wannabe. The shoes now fit — in fact, they are two sizes too small — but during that week I felt just as clueless about real-world lawyering.

Still, the corporate training was good. The most redeeming thing about it was the opportunity to finally make friends with a few of the other summers. During this week last year, my first spark of friendship occurred with one of them in particular. We were assigned to the same team working jointly on a corporate deal, and he amazed me as he orally crystallized our team members’ collective thoughts into a cohesive, logical, and flowing script. I remember looking intently at him in wonderment, and thinking to myself, He’s partner material — and a successful one, too, since he would be a NICE partner, not a screaming one. As he spoke, I played secretary and fiddled with the document as he spoke, and he soon was mesmerized at my abilities to manipulate text in Microsoft Word. That’s how our friendship was born.

We had our first real one-on-one conversation when we met up the following Saturday morning for a visit to his favorite patisserie in the neighborhood in which we both lived. Chocolate croissants, from this place in particular, are his guilty pleasure. By the way, I’ve never met a man — or a woman — who loves chocolate the way this guy does. We took our bakery to a bench nearby, found shade under a small collection of trees, and a conversation originally intended to span the breakfast hour overflowed into three hours, and even then, we only stopped because I had plans to meet friends in the early afternoon.

As we conversed, I marveled at how different we were, and yet how easily we got along. He’s a shyer type, but he opened up a great deal, and by the end of our morning together, I knew we would be good friends for a long time. Indeed, as the summer months unfolded, he became my closest confidante at work. When work was slow, he’d bring donuts to my office, or I’d bring a quarter of my ginormous rice krispy treats to his, and we’d sit and reflect on work and our lives, and pet giraffes that eat ice cream. Those were good times.

And when the summer was over, I feared that the good times would end, but they haven’t. When he called me from the airport, right before he left for his vacation in Brazil, I knew that this friendship would last into the year. And so it has — I’ve been to the City so many times, and he has come here a couple times, and ten days almost never pass without some sort of hour-long phone conversation to catch up. It’s good. And it all started a year ago at this time. What a difference a year makes.

* * *

This week was hot with activity: another defining event happened during the equivalent of this coming weekend, last year. On the first Sunday in June (the day after the patisserie outing with my co-worker friend), I finally experienced total irrationality and the boldness that comes with it. The following weekend, when Shin Seung Hun sang, “I believe” as we watched “My Sassy Girl” together, I really did believe that everything was finally coming together for me. I believed that my years of prayer were finally being answered, and in a much more fantastic way than I ever thought imaginable. And I believed that God was not just smiling — but utterly grinning from ear to ear with a generous gleam in His eyes — as He looked down on me and just rained down a huge blessing in the form of this person, whom I had spotted in the pew in front of me at church. What followed was a beautiful and magnificent whirlwind of dreams come true — then a rude and sudden awakening from those dreams. By the time tons of fireworks exploded against the skyline on a rainy Independence Day, we had already said our goodbyes and vowed to break contact for at least a year.

Not long after, I told a friend, “We went to see ‘Romeo and Juliet’ on our first date.” My friend replied, “That’s ironic. Damn.”

And it was ironic.

That period was one of the most painful times in my recent memory. It wasn’t just the immediate vaporization of a dream-come-true that I mourned. Now, a year later, I can more readily admit what I refused to believe before: that we didn’t stay together because he couldn’t to stick up for me. Or, more accurately, he wouldn’t.

The issue of whether I had a reasonable expectation for his loyalty (especially against his parents, to whom he was staunchly dedicated — which is one of the things I admired greatly about him) is a separate issue entirely. What I have had to confront and accept is the fact that circumstances alone did not shove him away from me; he made a choice to walk away. From me. And that is probably what has wounded my spirit the most. And whatever innocent trust in life, love, and/or magic that I may have had before I met him on June 3, 2007, has since been largely lost.

* * *

There are other events from the past year which I could talk about — and have talked about before here. But I mention the two above because they commenced around this time last year. The former has brought me delight, stability, and comfort, and has decreased my fears about starting at the firm this fall. The latter brought an unexpected and overflowing wealth of pure joy for a brief time, then inflicted some of the deepest pain I have experienced in my life, along with emotional repercussions that still remain and reverberate from time to time.

Today, a year later, it is helpful to look back and consider the path on which I have traveled in the intervening 365 days. I would like to spend more time pondering this path in the weeks ahead… because I have come to a recent realization that perhaps I have spent much of my time filling my world and schedule with all manners of distractions to cover up deep pains with which I have not yet fully dealt.

I feel a need to revisit some scabs, and open them up honestly before God. When I’m truly honest within my soul, I have to admit that I have a frightening tendency to doubt God’s willingness to heal my heart. It’s time to reach out and ask for help. It’s time to believe again. Rather than hiding these festering and deep-seated wounds with flimsy bandages that prevent real healing from happening, I need to present them to God and believe that He will treat them in His tender way and in His time.

Let it be so.

It’s mid-afternoon and I’m taking a break from studying for the bar. Just forty minutes ago, as I momentarily glanced away from my timed criminal law problem set, I saw sunlight streaming through the air, interrupted only occasionally by shadows of tree branches swaying in the summery breeze. Turning back to my work, I released a tiny sigh and shook my head to no one in particular, amused that the powers behind weather.com had been outsmarted once again. PM rain, my foot.

That foot is now proverbially entering my mouth. For almost as suddenly as a brightly lit Broadway theatre is dimmed before a show begins, the sky outside my window now has taken on a gloomy, overcast, and slightly ominous quality that makes me feel like today is the winter solstice again. Only the birds, still insistently chirping outside, remind me that we haven’t reverted back to December in some random time warp. And now, a peal of thunder — an audible sign of the inevitable storms that will follow. Spring has its charms as well as its costs.

The manically rapid changes of weather outside remind me of the season of flux in which I find myself right now. Even as I enjoy the solitude of this moment, tapping away at my laptop, seated at the corner desk in my bedroom, I know that the next six months of my life will be filled with all sorts of change.

To begin with, this room will only be mine for the next four days, and then I will move again — it will be my fifth move in the last twelve months. I have been a nomad for the last seven years (through college and law school), moving at least twice (and sometimes up to four times) a year, every year, and it isn’t until October that I will again be able to really call someplace “home.” In the time being, I will set up tents in various places — down the street, at friends’ apartments in the City, in a host of locales in China, in the Bay Area, then back at my parents’ home… until I shop and find my own place to call home in the City in the fall.

Other changes abound, the most significant of which is the shift in social scenery that will take place, first over the summer, and then permanently when we all scatter from this place to our respective destinations around the country and the globe. It’s a scary proposition.

I hardly remember what it was like to be a 1L, when I didn’t know or care about or love anyone here. All I recall is that first semester was difficult for me because I felt I had no real connections. But second semester kicked off a new beginning, the dawn of deep friendships and the sprouting of sapling relationships, some of which have since grown into what appear to be mighty oaks, in a short amount of time.

As surely as summer needs occasional rain to keep the grasses green, my last seven terms here at school endured their share of bumps in the road in these friendships. But it was summer all the same, full of sun, warmth, comfort, freedom, growth, and rich abundance. Next week is commencement, which strikes me as a partial misnomer, because “commencement” means “beginning,” yet for me it will mark a significant end to what I consider nothing short of a golden age.

And what then? It is time for the tides to turn, for the next chapters to open, for the next … well, pick your favorite metaphor. My dear sister Rachel once told me, “Living life is a team sport.” And it is. I know I couldn’t have survived even half of the trials I went through in law school (no pun intended) without the wisdom, steadiness, prayers, and company of brothers and sisters who walked beside me.

I wonder what the future will bring, how God will provide, and what my next team will look like. I have my hopes, but I also have my serious doubts, about what my social circle in New York will be like. I have trouble believing that it could begin to equal the caliber of spiritual strength and iron-sharpening-iron that I have almost taken for granted here.

Yet I know I have chosen to be there for a reason; prayer and circumstance have led me there, and for those reasons, I remain fairly confident in my decision to make that city the site of my next step. It is an exciting place, the central seat of many events of national and global significance, and the logical starting point for an aspiring attorney. That, and its unmatched diversity fill it with inhabitants and cultures that promise to endlessly fascinate. The flip side, of course, is that the city is also largely dominated by warped values, a tantalizing but destructive hierarchy of priorities, and a frightening level of consumerism.

*pondering*

I suppose the thing to remember at this crossroads, at this juncture, is that God is in supreme control. He calls us to follow Him, regardless of where He may lead us. And He calls us to trust in Him, regardless of the season into which he may usher us. For every spring, He will provide an umbrella. For every autumn, a harvest. For every winter, a fire. And for every cycle of seasons, He will also provide a summer.

“Your father and I watched the home video of our Washington D.C. trip before you started college. At that time, you made a lot of speeches–including signing bills on the tables in Congress and creating money with Pink Panther on it. Now, you’re a Harvard Law graduate. I am so very proud of you — your independent way to be inspired, working hard towards the inspiration, shouldering the responsibility for training and insisting and persevering in the inspiration.

“Mom understands that you love people and are willing to pay the price for it. May God’s love always be the source of love. […] There are 78 days from May 19 to July 28 – a special 78-day race. I’ll pray for God’s mercy and grace and your diligence [as you study for the bar]. It’s so exciting. What a race! We have to celebrate this July 30 – it will mark a wonderful ending of a pursuit of your lawyer dream. It will also mark a great beginning.

“I wish I could help more in this race. I trust the sovereign God is in control. The best thing I can do is pray for your faith, your living in His will. He alone in this universe can help you anytime, anywhere, for anything… God is in your race as well.“

Something was greatly amiss tonight, and I had to get away to think and pray about it for a while. I knew something was bothering me, but couldn’t tell which combination of the few-but-frequent usual suspects was to blame. I came back, and you had texted me — and seamlessly you managed to have us slip away for an hour-long walk around this neighborhood. Probably not the most appropriate thing for the formal occasion, but in hindsight, certainly the most necessary thing. Thank you for knowing that I needed that, and creating space for it.

You have these moments when you teach me things. Generally they are tucked away somewhere in neat packages and hidden amid the usual course of banter or random musings about any variety of topics that typically consume our times together. I never know when one of these neat packages will make its way to the doorstep of my day.

It’s always a surprise, in timing and in form. Sometimes it comes in a letter postmarked with a stamp. Sometimes it comes in a three-hour conversation as we sit on some fallen log in the thick of a little forest replete with leaves of magnificent colors in the coolness of autumn. Sometimes it comes as sunset turns to dusk and dusk melts into evening, as we click our dress shoes down brick sidewalks for a full hour. As we did today. Though we were completely out of place (with me decked out in my satin dress and you strolling around in your newly tailored suit), we were absolutely where we needed to be. And…that was my little surprise of the day, a surprise that meant a lot to me, because it came at the right time, and love really does heal a whole host of things.

You acknowledged my fears about the present time — a seemingly benign time of joy and commencement, friends and families and gatherings — and explained that the underlying inexplicable sadness is not that great a mystery after all, because we’re in the throes of a great time of transition, change, and flux. The life we’ve known for the past three years, which was, in some ways, idyllic (“nerd playground” for you, and “finally finding a family” for me), is about to end.

You also explained to me that meaningful friendships take a lot of work, and that they require both adaptation and accommodation. I darted a sharp and frustrated glance at you when you said that, and insisted that you understand that such a concept is far from epiphanic in my world. But you had a point to make, and it came in an implied form: if you understand that friendships require giving and taking, why do you insist on doing the giving and not also insist on doing some taking? I couldn’t find the words to explain to you that I DO like to do some taking, but I hate having to ask for it. In struggling to articulate my thoughts, I had to confront my own wish that my friends, my loved ones, you — could just magically understand me enough to just “get it” and give “it” without my explicit request. Like how you texted me, and gently but firmly whisked me outside today. You knew it was what I needed. I wish it were always like that. I know that’s not realistic… I’m just saying.

Then you started your oral essay on friendship. Great friendships are tested and strengthened on conflicts, confrontations, and consequent resolutions grounded in forthrightness, and honesty. Special friendships (like ours, you predict) will last well into the years when you and I grow old because the letters will continue, efforts will be made, and … somehow, you theorize, even after life gets in the way — we will still have the incredible blessing of the sheer magnitude of the great friendship we currently share, and that alone establishes a bond that will last basically forever.

“I hope you’re right,” I murmured.

“I know I am,” you replied, with your usual bravado that makes me sometimes smirk with a raised eyebrow, and other times makes me shake my head and laugh. I called you on it, and you insisted that this time you meant it. I really do hope you’re right.

The biggest thing you taught me today was not from anything that you said, per se — but just by what you did. Specifically, you put your grand theory into practice in the context of our friendship. You proved to me that our friendship is a truly great one, one that can survive the tests of conflicts, confrontations, and consequent resolutions, strengthened by the rigorous demands of honesty.

You let me talk about things that were weighing on my heart, and let me revisit questions that have been left unresolved in my mind. With your tacit permission and invitation, we spoke openly again about that which we pondered and prayed about for a healthy period of time this semester. We talked about wrongs and rights, and forgiveness.

I was reassured that your decision was born of daily prayer, meticulous thought, and a lot of love. And the puzzle pieces began to resolve with one another once we together put the chronology in order (however awkward it may have been) and you filled my request to narrate your thought processes along the way. Everything made a lot more sense. I won’t ever fully get it, but the most important questions have been answered. And the rest I can just leave up to God.

Any other friendship might have toppled under the type of pressure we’ve put it under lately — but as you said, “We’re going to bounce back to that place of security again, it’s just a matter of time.” And I totally agree.

It turned out all right after all. Now is the time for healing, for strengthening, for growing. And the implications of today’s healing goes beyond just the relationship between you and me. It makes me understand and realize that this type of healing, and this type of strength in a relationship is possible. This depth of love in action is real in at least one corner of the world. That is an amazing gift for this particular spirit, which falls increasing prone to cynicism. I thank God in every remembrance of you.

I’ve been making my way through the book of Joshua lately, and last night’s reading took me into chapter 22. Verse 5 of that chapter particularly stuck out to me — in it, Joshua is addressing three of the tribes of Israel as they headed to the lands that God had given over to them. Joshua 22:5 says this —

“But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord gave you: to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to obey his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul.”

What a powerful set of parting charges; and it is still as relevant to us today as it was to the tribes of Israel back then. Five commands — and each speaks of what our relationship to God ought to look like. Love Him. Walk in His ways, walk with Him, follow Him. Obey Him and do as He directs in His Word and through His guidance. And hold fast to Him — cling to God. And serve Him — work for, and live for, God with everything within us.

Each command is stirring in its own way, but the fourth one in particular especially stuck out to me. “Hold fast to him,” Joshua said. When I read that, a couple images come to mind. First, there is the image of the jockey clinging for dear life as his racehorse bolts across a track. I also see a shy little girl gripping her father’s hand in the midst of a public crowd.

The first image reflects the sheer power of breakneck speed and “holding fast” for the sake of preserving one’s physical self. The second reflects a stillness and “holding fast” for the sake of preserving one’s emotional security. I think that both are good representations of what it means to hold fast to God as we walk through this life.

Because, really, as humans – we have so little control over our lives. It is God alone who tells the sun to rise and the moon to shine, the oceans to roar and the thunder to crash. It is He who dictates the substance of our lives, and He has already seen all the days that we have yet to live. As one of my dear second ge ge told me a couple years ago, “The safest place is in the middle of God’s will.” Only by holding fast to Him can we ensure a life well lived, for He alone knows what is best, and when we walk the journey closely and next to Him, we cannot stray too far.

Furthermore, God alone can determine our value as humans, and it is in Him that we must find our emotional and spiritual security. When He calls us “My child” we are immediately endowed with the greatest title we could ever dream or hope for. But we (I) spend our lives chasing after a host of other things — for some it’s money, for others it’s prestige, still for others it is family or love or feeling needed or otherwise significant — all the while forgetting the material point: that in our states of being as God’s children, we already have everything. We have enough. We have more than enough.

Only when we “hold fast” can we fully experience these truths, though. So… thank Joshua for the reminder, and thank God for speaking through Joshua.

Love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to obey his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul. This reminder could not have come at a better time.

a little tired, a little grey

alone, but in an okay way

I’m here with You, just You, today

the air is calm, my heart is still

I’ll just wait here, right here, until

the fog clears and You show Your will

of twists and curves I’ve tired fast

I want Your joy, true joy, at last

my hope into Your love I cast

and day by day, I’ll walk beside

trailing pure light, Your light, my guide

trusting Your good hands to provide

You promised that with me You’d stay

give shelter in Your love, I pray

I’m here with You, just You, today

When my own words are not enough, sometimes God sends other people to fill the space. I received this email (excerpted below) of immense encouragement from a dear, dear sister (I love you! – you know who you are). I share it here in hopes that it will also stir inspiration and hope in readers of this site. God IS faithful, in every season.

I don’t know exactly your brand of pain but I know what it is to suffer under God’s hand for a very long time, to feel that he is turning the back of his hand toward you, and hiding his face. Over and over again.

Just thinking about your pain makes me recall my own again, those dark years, and my tears are flowing for you as much as for my own memories of despair. And though I’m in a relatively calm place now, the storm is never too far away…you know you really have no control over the things you care about the most…over anything really. And that can be pretty terrifying.

I just remember during my times of personal hell, one thought that kept me moored and anchored when black waters swirled all around me. I feel compelled to share it with you, hoping it will encourage you, hoping it will help you cling to God and not withdraw from Him…from the only one that can carry you through this. The one who loves you so much…who is hurting for you now too, more than I hurt for you or even you yourself. If he could take this pain away from you he would do it in a heart beat, without hesitation…why would he not spare you from this when he’s already give up everything for you?

So the thought is this. It is the picture of a concerned parent, bringing his sick toddler to the doctor. Of the doctor administering some horribly painful procedure to the child. Of the child thrashing around wildly, screaming in pain and agony. And of the father holding the child down with all his might, with his full weight, tears streaming down his face, his heart breaking anew with every cry of his child—Stop! Don’t you love me? Why are you doing this to me? Make it stop! Let me go! Don’t you love me?—and the whole time the father wishes there was some way to trade places with his child…he would gladly trade places with him if he could.

We know this painful procedure is a spiritual surgery of sorts. We know it’s to pry open our dead, stiff fingers that clutch in them some prized idol of our hearts. Sometimes it’s the life of our only child (like Abraham and Isaac), and sometimes it’s the blessing of a father (like Jacob’s struggles)…but always it’s the one thing we think we cannot bear to live without.

All of this I’ve known and acknowledged for a very long time. But it’s only recently that God has taught me (and is still teaching me) something even more amazing and grace-filled (or rather I should say “amazing-grace” filled).

That God takes it away AND he gives it back.

Once he’s pried away that idol from your cold dead hand, and makes you cry out in pain and agony, and makes you acknowledge that He is Lord—the only one that we need and truly desire, then he gives it back to you.

The only child you had to sacrifice, the blessing you wanted, the children and wealth that were taken away from you all on one day by one horrific storm that literally came from hell. God gives you back your heart’s desire. He promises to fulfill your every deep need. He promises life in abundance. And that’s not just “spiritual” blessings. It’s everything.

Now before this starts sounding too much like a “health and wealth” gospel, I guess I should clarify that what God gives you back is not necessarily the physical/material life you might have picked out for yourself in a cosmic catalogue. It may not look the same as you may have envisioned in your mind (it will be better!) But the point is it FEELS the same. Whatever deep-seated desire you had, for love, integrity, healing from brokenness, meaning, significance—all the things we know we all need—he gives it back to us. He gives it back 10-fold. He gives us what we could not even have imagined for ourselves, what we would not have dared to be so bold to ask him. He gives so much that the precious idol that we clutched so tightly looks like a shabby piece of rubbish compared to what he replaces it with.

And I don’t believe it is just spiritual pie (by and by) that he gives us. Our God is a God of the physical and material, of flesh and blood and touchable goodness. He is the God of the tangible too. He is more than just the tangible, but He is certainly no less. Far be it from me to prophecy that God will reward each man in this life…the ultimate reward is always yet to come…but God is good in this life. Before we get to heaven we will taste and see and know that God is good. Because He’s done it all throughout history. Hannah was granted Samuel in flesh and blood. Abraham was spared Isaac. And Jacob returned home with a spiritual AND physical inheritance.

The difference is in their attitudes. Why would God take something away just to give it back to us again? Because, I believe that it would’ve killed us to have it in the first instance, but we can have it in the second only because God has cut out the cancer in our hearts that would’ve spread all out of control if he did not make us fall to our knees and confess that He is God alone, first and foremost.

…

[I] want to encourage you while you are in this wintry deadness. It won’t be forever. I love that I had the chance to get out of perpetually sunny California to experience true winters. Everything is dead and cold and barren and it can drag on soooo long. And my own winter (in my life) seemed to drag on forever too…for decades. But only recently, for the first time ever, I feel Spring stirring. I feel the warmth of God’s love and the amazing beauty of his creation…his gifts to me are as bountiful and free as the thousands of flowers blooming in the budding trees. And yet I still fear a second winter, a new fresh hell…But at least next time I will have the memory of Spring to give me hope.

Maybe it’s premature to talk about Spring when you are suffering the sting of Winter (with no discernable end in sight!) But I just wanted to testify that God is good.

…

I just felt compelled to say how amazing God has been in my own times of desolation and I hope it encourages you in some way. And what my groanings can’t express, I will leave to the Spirit to perfect even as I pray for you to feel God’s love holding you closely and tightly to him.

So beautiful, and so true. Thanks, dear sister. And thanks be to God, for this encouragement through her.

You know how some things run so deep, and they run so raw and close to your heart that even the therapeutic balm of reflection through writing cannot generate words that begin to echo what’s raging in your spirit?

Right now, I have that going on. And I’ve tried to write about it, because I feel like I should, because writing about it now might help me understand it later. But… I just can’t. The phrases and sentences are elusive. I beckon, but they will not come. All I feel is a silent roiling that cannot and will not be reduced to words.

I realize now that this has happened before, several times. That’s why I don’t have records of some of the deep, deep valleys. I wish I could write, but I can’t.

I currently have exactly what I want – you right in front of me, doing your thing… and I’m just here doing mine. Life at this particular moment is very, very good.

Occasionally, you look up from your work, turn around, and I can feel your gaze as you stare into a gap of space next to me as you ponder what to type out next on your computer. Having found whatever inspiration you were hoping for, you return to your keyboard and I hear the rhythmic tap tap-tap-tap tap that comes from people who type on the right keys. Then you stop and pause again, tilt your head, and ask me how to spell a word. I either tell you how to spell it, or I laugh and tell you it’s not a word. Back to the tapping.

Another pause, and you turn around, and start chatting away at me. As is always the case, you just speak about whatever is on your mind at the moment. And we talk about it. Except that sometimes I don’t like the subjects you bring up. I’m happy to talk about them with you — just because I like talking with you (don’t conflate the subjects with the speaker) — but they make me uncomfortable and they put this queasy yucky feeling in my stomach.

I don’t like the subject of you going away to do your thing. It may be only an hour away by plane, but I don’t care. I like the world as it is in just this second — and I don’t want it to change. I also don’t like the subject of you living on your own, laying the foundational bricks down on the grand house that is your life’s dream. We’ve both bought our plots of land with the degrees we’ve just earned — and I liked doing real estate school with you. Now it’s time to build our houses — in separate neighborhoods, it seems. I don’t like this subject, and I feel my blood pressure rising even as I think about it now, when you’ve finished speaking about it in the time being.

And there’s another thing I don’t like.  Let me rewind a couple moments, and remind myself of something: I currently have exactly what I want – you right in front of me, doing your thing… and I’m just here doing mine. Life at this particular moment is very, very good.

So why the pit in my stomach? Why the frayed nerves of sadness coursing through my unhappy veins, and sinking my heart into a pool of lukewarm yuckiness? Right now, here in this moment, you are poking fun at me (what else is new), filling your screen with thoughts that I love to read, and all that I want is right here.

If I were to write to you to tell you these things, I can imagine what you would write back and say. You might tell me that I need to learn to stay here, in this moment, and appreciate it. That I need to learn to be here — and remain here — and not get carried away in my imagination into the scary and unknown future, with the unhappy parting that I know it will bring. Because we have today, and that is good enough for today.

Filling my mind and heart with the miseries that will come in the future only mar the pure joy in what is here right now.  They are all part of life, and the misery cannot be averted by additional pondering over it — rather, that emotion and time is wasted on the inevitable; better to enjoy the sweet present as it is. As you told me before in tiny print, “I trust that [God] willed my life, and that in His provision of love and joy, along with pain and hurt, He understood that humans would build the fabric of their lives with these.” The words echo in my mind, and they comfort me.

God will make a way for all of this. Already He has given all of us more than we could have dreamed or asked for — and in the end, all will be well because He upholds us in every turn, and His plan is far beyond even our most detailed understandings. So…I’m learning to stay here, and not run off into the future and be miserable thinking about it. Tomorrow will take care of itself — or rather, God will take care of tomorrow.

And as for today … well, I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Hurry up and wait
So close, but so far away
Everything that you’ve always dreamed of
Close enough for you to taste
But you just can’t touch

You wanna show the world, but no one knows your name yet
Wonder when and where and how you’re gonna make it
You know you can if you get the chance
In your face as the door keeps slamming
Now you’re feeling more and more frustrated
And you’re getting all kind of impatient waiting

We live and we learn to take
One step at a time
There’s no need to rush
It’s like learning to fly
Or falling in love
It’s gonna happen and it’s
Supposed to happen that we
Find the reasons why
One step at a time

You believe and you doubt
You’re confused, you got it all figured out
Everything that you always wished for
Could be yours, should be yours, would be yours
If they only knew

You wanna show the world, but no one knows your name yet
Wonder when and where and how you’re gonna make it
You know you can if you get the chance
In your face as the door keeps slamming
Now you’re feeling more and more frustrated
And you’re getting all kind of impatient waiting

When you can’t wait any longer
But there’s no end in sight
when you need to find the strength
It’s the faith that makes you stronger
The only way you get there
Is one step at a time

We live and we learn to take
One step at a time
There’s no need to rush
It’s like learning to fly
Or falling in love
It’s gonna happen and it’s
Supposed to happen that we
Find the reasons why
One step at a time