Cattails, Rabbit Trails, and Thistlefish: Here, and Nowhere Else: Opportunities for Greater Faith

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Here, and Nowhere Else: Opportunities for Greater Faith

Fall is an easy time for me to feel overwhelmed.
Sometimes it's a good overwhelming. My heart tries to soak up every inch of this glorious season, and my eyes want to devour every single color of the clothes and the leaves and the cars and the streetlights. My insides get all bunched-up with excitement when I think about the approaching Christmas season. It's all I can think of when I see red and green stoplights at night, especially with the early darkness that has come along with daylight savings. I begin anticipating what the reaction will be to the presents I am most excited to give, and nighttime car drives that have no purpose other than to look at festive trees and porches that have been decked-out in sparkles and lights.

Other times, it's a bad overwhelming.
Homework seems unending, and my brain doesn't feel like it ever stops scrambling to remember everything on my extensive to-do list. My body is run down from its lack of sleep and lack of food. With Christmas comes another to-do list of presents and cookies to make, and people to see, and decorations to get; obligations continually hounding me for attention. And the wet, heavy blanket over your soul when you feel like you are alone.

Fall is the hardest season for me to be single sometimes. Loneliness is a common thing to feel when it's so glorious outside and there's no one to enjoy it with, or no one's flannels to wear, or no one to watch Christmas movies early with you, or no one to go to a crowded coffee shop and read with you.

Besides that, I think fall is just that sort of season. Every season we long for different things, andsometimes that correlates with the physical seasons. Winter is a dead and grey sort of season; Spring is anticipatory of blossoms and flowers; Summer is warm and slow. And fall, sometimes, is just that dread of the dead season coming, when things are darker and colder and lonelier and sometimes the snow leaves you stranded at home.

But it's a marvelous thing that I can rely on the fact that every season - truly, every moment of every day - is an opportunity to choose greater trust. I ask for greater faith, so I'm given greater opportunities to choose who/what I put my faith in. There are endless small moments to choose whether I willfocus on my own discouragements or circumstances or the lonely, overwhelming feeling of my heart...or trust that I am where I am supposed to be, and that I will continue to be guided to where I need to be when I need to be there.

"Here and nowhere else is the appointed place. If faith does not go to work here, it will not go to work at all." - Elizabeth Elliot

Have a phenomenal week, friends.
Case

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