weekly gratitude

It's coming up on my 27th birthday. 

In less than a month I can check another year off and honestly, I don't know how to feel about that. It's not that I'm excited or anxious - but not necessarily apathetic about it either. I'm just not sure. This has been a hard year. 2013 has been hard. 

Wonderful, but hard. 

Healing, but hard. 

Full of growth and hope, but hard so much of the time too.

And I just don't know how I feel about it. 

∆∆∆

As with most things of the "whatthecrapIjustdon'tknow", throwing-your-hands-up-and-calling-it-a-day, "please pass the coffee and/or wine" ((depending on what kind of day you're having)) nature though, it got me thinking. 

It was my 25th birthday when I first started writing up my Weekly Gratitude. Is it just me or does 2011 seem impossibly long ago? Two years, gone in a flash. 

((I won't dally and tell you right now that after watching probably far too much Doctor Who lately, I'm appreciating time a lot more in a strange, BBC kind of way - cheers and may the TARDIS be with you))

But truly, when you're in a period of waiting, and trying so desperately to be still and trust God and waiting for Him to make a move, it's so dangerously easy to get yourself lost - lost in that waiting. And then when you look up and see the calendar pages have flipped far beyond what you thought possible in such a short amount of time, you're left in the last few weeks of a certain age with your head spinning on your shoulders like a damn dervish. 

A friend from college recently posted a thought that has stuck with me:

Being still and doing nothing are two very different things.

And how often do I confuse the two? How often do other people see me and mistake one for the other?

To be honest, half the time I think I'm doing one and find out ((perhaps too late)) that I am stuck completely in the cycle of the other.

Still, there are those rare times when I think I might actually have figured out how to just be still. Rare, fleeting, and oh-so-precious.

As are most of the better things in life.

In those moments I've been able to shut myself up long enough to stop talking at God, I can actually begin to listen to what He's trying to say to me. And even if people around me take a look at my life and think "nothing", there is that hope that knowing me well enough will allow them to see that it is a deliberate move of stillness. 

Waiting.

Trusting.

Knowing that what will come of all of this, in the end, is barely the edge of the flicker of what I could ever imagine myself. 

All that to say, I suppose, that today I am thankful for that.

I am thankful for this period of waiting and trusting and learning that my way is not the best way and that if I want to see my God do what I believe He is capable of, I'd best take my hands off the wheel for a while and let Him drive this thing. 

So I guess I actually am looking forward to 27... I just have to wait for it.