I have several routines now when I go to church, especially when I go to church and no one is there yet or there are just a few people wandering around.
I always go through the wardrobe into the library. There is, actually, another door to the library, but I make a point to go through the wardrobe.
Just in case.
I also try and walk the newly created path through the back woods. It’s not that anything has changed since I walked it the last time. It’s not that I spend longer than a few minutes back there. But I think for anyone who walks that path and crosses that bridge and hears the birds flapping through the brush and the lizards skittering across the leaves, there is this moment when you feel like this place is yours and yours alone. There is something sacred and holy and still out there in the woods.
So the library and the wardrobe and the woods and if I’m really lucky and the church is empty, I sit in the sanctuary by myself and try and figure out just how I got here.
There are these surreal moments when I walk through church and it’s as if my brain has not yet caught up to my heart. My heart loves this place and the people here like I have known them all my life. But my brain keeps trying to wrestle with me and tell me it’s only been since April.
That’s when I sit in the sanctuary and take a few breaths and try and let my brain catch up before it gets too winded.
I sit and I thank God for all He has given me this year. I never could have imagined being this happy, this fulfilled. I could never have imagined what it truly means to have purpose in my life.
And then I move past thinking “how did this all happen” and start thinking about “what’s going to happen next?”
That little kid that is still a part of me, the little kid who can’t sleep because every day feels like Christmas Eve, that little kid is not as loud as she was right after confirmation, but she’s still there, this tiny bit of joy nestled within my soul.
And as anxious as I am and as impatient as I am to get on with things, to know what will happen next, I know that the beauty of life is simply the living of it.
In an episode from Dr. Who (yes, I’m quoting from Dr. Who), the Doctor wants to know what will happen next in his journey and River Song, a fellow time traveler, tells him, “It’s a long story, Doctor. Can’t be told. Has to be lived.”
For the first time in my life I am glad and thankful that I can’t flip to the last page of the book and see how the story ends.
For the first time, I am happy just to live it.
