Searching for the Light

It’s the middle of winter but feels like spring. Not because of the air around me – while the days have been warm, the air carries a chill that wouldn’t survive a spring dawn – no, it feels like spring because life feels fresh and bright and full.

I spend my afternoons in the garden, where I’m branching out from indoor plants and trying to create a bed that’s bursting with flowers and, someday, bees. It always amazes me how giving to something else can fill you up, too.

I spend my nights with words, whether reading or writing. I’m learning to write more about what’s on the inside of me rather than about external events. Heartache is real, but there is so much more to me than the parts that hurt and I want to draw them out with a pen and fill in the blanks. My heart is a home and people have come and gone, but this heart is growing and filling my bones and my lungs and I want to explore words and myself in a way that goes deeper.

For a lot of my life the future scared me. The thought of things happening out of my control, things I didn’t choose for myself, scared me. Not knowing how things would turn out scared me.

But these days, I welcome the uncertainty. I welcome not knowing what the future holds. There’s excitement in my steps, in my words. I don’t know whether I trust God more than I used to or if I’m simply learning to accept what I cannot know. And there is so, so much I do not know.

I stop wondering what if and embrace the mercy that is every new morning I have the privilege of waking up to. I read books and I wish I could bottle them up and hand them out to everyone I meet because how can I describe what fills my soul without stealing their words?

I got a haircut yesterday, just a trim, and though it looks almost the same, it feels light and I feel light and life feels light. I have spent so many days searching for the light, and only now am I realising joy isn’t one large moment where everything changes, it’s the smaller moments that build you up. Sometimes I think I’m so set on the ideal moment where everything falls together – you know, like a scene in a book – that I miss life itself.

Well, in the least I’m learning not to.

This post is to say the world is turning and I’m paying attention and I’m content. It didn’t happen in one instant, like the books make it out to be. It’s happened gradually, building me up. And it’s still happening and it will continue to happen and at some point I’ll feel sad again but that point is not now and I don’t think it’s tomorrow, either.

Sarah xx