Patient Trust...

These thoughts are pertinent-again and always...thank you Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of God
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to
something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing though
some stages of instability-
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
your ideas mature gradually-let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

(Picture is a copy of "Patience" by Rachel Ferguson. Oil on Panel 30" x 36" 2003)

Goodbye Nebraska--Hello, Colorado

"everything familiar and nothing like home"...

This is my saying to encapsulate my feelings of being back in Colorado.

August 1997. I stuffed all I needed into my jeep cherokee and left Colorado to go to College in Nebraska. Little did I know then how much I would grow to love all that it was and all God allowed in these past 9 years. So much more than I could put down on a page...
Now, I'm sitting here in a somewhat strange house, dogsitting 3 huge samoyed dogs ...and I've lost track of my days. I've done so much driving that I forget where I am (really, it's a very weird feeling) and what I've been doing. It's hard to believe that only a little over a week ago I was loading up my uncle's 1978 (great year to be born!) horse trailer with all my earthly stuff and then getting it rained on through the slats and unloading it at my dad's house into a room where it would not fit and wondering, "what the crap am I doing here anyway?" I thought I would cry big crocodile tears when I drove past the Nebraska state line for the last official time, but no. I'm more numb, I suppose. It's more like this feeling: "God, I really hope you've got a plan in this, because if you don't, I'm in big trouble". So, I've been calling out much more frequently and earnestly and intentionally, which is in itself a good thing.
So, I'm sitting here wearing my Nebraska sweatshirt very proudly and wondering how I'll fit into this place again, when I, the person that I am, feel so different. Here's an interesting self-analysis. When I'm in Nebraska it's like a bragging right that I'm from Colorado, as if I'm super-cool mountain girl or something! Now that I'm in Colorado all I want to do is slap the big red "N" sticker somewhere for the world to see and be proud that I don't drive like a psychomaniac like the rest of these folks seem to do. I'm nice. I'm from Nebraska.
But, I digress.
All sorts of strange emotions that I'm trying to give myself the time and space to fully experience, work through and accept. Accept that people won't wave when I drive by. Accept that I more than likely will not see anyone I know at the grocery store, muchless, ten or so people! Accept that I won't find an open road to drive on. Accept that life is different. But different doesn't mean bad, just different! So, I am trusting this step has ground beneath it that I will land on as I go...even if I can't see the ground quite yet.