Leaving [Part One]

Sometimes life throws you curves and you can't help but freak out a bit....

Sometimes when you get what you've wanted for a while, it seems much more scarier on paper!

It's moments like this when I take comfort in the fact that a little girl walked through a wardrobe into an unexpected land, full of adventure and surprise.

Or take comfort in the story of a hobbit who while not looking for adventure had adventure find him and after a worthwhile journey returned to his hobbit hole never to be the same again.

I know it's silly that these are fictional stories but I think their theme is one that is applicable today, even now.

Since I was a young girl I was drawn to stories like these.

I snuck the Narnia tales with me to read in the hall of Sunday night church,

my copy of the Hobbit worn and frail from being read over and over again.

These are stories of people doing great things b/c they took risks, and I heard a call.

I also take great comfort in that fact that in any journey/adventure I am on in this life I am never alone and there is a greater Author weaving together my story. He's done a great job so far, why should I doubt Him now?

It's moments like this when I like to reread an excerpt from an author who, I sometimes feel, writes inside my head.

I soak in the words and let them settle for a bit,

and I feel what I felt when I first read them- adventure far away on the horizon, leaving- a mere daydream.

And now that time draws nearer and leaving is inevitable

I find comfort in the thought that when I last read these words leaving was a hope, a butterflies in the stomach "if only".

And now, I have no choice but to follow that dream and trust

so I remember that fire I felt awaken my soul from the stories I read of dragons and fauns with parcels and trustworthy lions

the fire that once again warmed my heart as I reread these lines:

...life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath:

I’ll tell you how the sun rose

A ribbon at a time . . .

It’s a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn’t matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were . . . and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be.

So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification.

And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?

It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.

I want to repeat one word for you:

Leave.

Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.

This passage was an excerpt from Through Painted Deserts.