leaves fall down

Another week of online class, another week close to shorts season being over.  The nights are cold enough for flannel and wool socks; the afternoons retain enough summer for shorts and sunbathing.

I started this post over a week ago. 

Almost all the leaves have fallen. We have had class in person for almost a full week now. It's shocking how swift seasons shift.

Here's a poem that sums up some of my thoughts lately, in case you missed it on my Instagram story:

the good life you know

might not be the good life you have.

i remember

(a phrase i overuse in poetry)

i remember

in the trailer

we didn't have much,

but always enough

for my parents and their friends

to have fondue and play uno

at night

and i

thought, "this is the good life,

the one i'm supposed to chase."

but that belonged to them

and even then

just for a season.

that's the good life i knew,

as opposed to the one i have,

neither meant to last

more than a season.

 

apartment 60 C

 Six months ago, my roommate and I were several weeks deep into mandatory quarantine. Today, Tanner and I are only a few days into yet another forced isolation.  We, thankfully, remain healthy, but our reality feels like a strange limbo.  It seems like every day we are hearing from missionaries who deeply desire to be overseas to begin or continue ministry and they can't go. Travel is apparently virtually impossible in light of Covid. In my small, human mind, the present and future of overseas ministry feels impossible.  People say things like, "When this is over..." but where is their guarantee that this will ever truly be over?

And then our house fills with the light of the rising sun, and a friend tells us that we are going to receive a financial support from their parents this month, and the coffee tastes amazing, and there are so many blessings pushing us forward into ministry that I have to call to remembrance what I know to be true. God has called us to be trained now, not five years past or future.  He cares for every "little picture" detail I notice and controls every "big picture" stroke I cannot fathom.

It is time to be comforted by my inability, rather than pretending I am able on my own. It is time...and yet this change of perspective is overdue. It is time, though I wonder if I will remember tomorrow? God is able to hold me in a place of dependence, I am not.