This Little Light Of Mine

I'm about to embark in a whole new direction. I'm taking a risk. I'm actually taking a whole mess of risks. It feels like cannon balling in a tank full of eels and hoping that none of you them make you regret making the jump.

I've been house sitting for some family friends this week and have had so much time to myself in the past 7 days it's been down right silly. I can't remember when I had this much alone time. And while at time's it's been a bit too quiet, it has been one of the most enjoyable weeks I've had in...I can't remember when! I've just been marinating in the sweet peacefulness of solitude and listening to the little whispers that tell me to keep moving on, to just float and enjoy the momentum that is carrying me forward.

This morning I woke up and shlumped around the house, decidedly taking the morning off to figure out the source of a funk that nagged at me since the moment my eyes fluttered open, when a dear, old friend called and showered me with much needed praise and encouraged me to do more, be more. For the rest of the day her words of praise echoed in my head and made me wonder if I have been holding myself back in certain areas. Had I been restraining myself from using all of my talents in fear that they would separate me from others or that it would drive people away?

I wondered if I had been hiding my light under a bushel, as the old song says.

And isn't that ridiculous? Isn't it completely nuts to assume that the people who will and do love all the different parts that make up who you are would run screaming for the hills, because you posses a talent that they don't? Yes. The answer to that insane question is yes.

So, here I go, ready to take a leap yet again.

Dear Lover

Have you ever had a time in your life where every day is so jam-packed with signs meant only for you that your whole self is exhausted at each day's end just thinking about It All?

This is the very time in which I live.

Not too long ago this City Girl learned how to identify her own seasons without depending on someone else to point it out. And this Girl has since then experienced a few different kinds of weather, if you will. Some days the storms raged, the rains beat down upon this body while other days heralded some glimpses of sunshine and the birds all around sang overhead. It was on one of those sunny days that deep in the recesses of this Girl's mind were heard these words, "The adventure starts now."

I am on the brink of yet another short move and a possible small shift of the career that is both exciting and frightening. While I starfish on the floor at the end of every day, exhausted and overwhelmed, I look up at the aged ceiling, full of strange holes and cracks, and wonder to myself how this life could actually be mine. How could this life, so full of the amazing and mysterious, belong to this Girl?

I never knew life could feel this full, this wonderful.

It was during one of my daily drives to the center of the city that I felt a tingle in my very being; an odd spark, a feeling I hadn't felt in some time. It's a feeling that is often accompanied by all the songs on the radio making sense, being kind to strangers for no reason, and gushing to anyone within earshot. I was in love. I still am. And as strange as it may sound, I find myself in daily love with The One who whispered to me that it was time for adventure, The One who has been overwhelming this little heart with omens of a great and glorious future, The One who has been with me since the very beginning.

The adventure, dear lover, has indeed begun.