The green bead is for growth.

The whole house is asleep.  I've just gotten home and I'm sitting on the couch trying to breath.  The chlorine on my skin is killing me.  It makes my heart tighten and my lungs break.  But I'm too lazy to get up and shower it off.  We're supposed to get snow dumped on us Christmas Eve Eve.  Secretly, I'm a little excited.  Being snowed in is like being a kid for a day.  And being snowed in at home is even better.  It means hot chocolate and sleds and movie marathons in my pajamas and slippers.

Tasha, you're so different.  I can tell you've grown since you left.  I can see the difference.  Wow.

I want to ask grown how.  Wow?  After being with me for five minutes, wow?  Or is that just the thing to say nowadays.  Is being grown joining the rest of the good words like grace and redeemed and transparent and community.

And what is it that makes someone grown?  The fact that you can read the wine list and order something that you really do want to drink.   Or the change that your wardrobe makes from crazy colors and prints to solids and stripes.  Is it the skill you've picked up of always looking someone in the eye and the perfection of asking the right questions in the right order with the right smile on your face.  Maybe being grown is ordering salad with vinaigrette instead of ranch.  And switching from romance novels to self improvement books. 

I am not that grown.  I am going to be completely honest: I like wild color.  I get nervous around people.  And I will always, always love ranch.

So I ask them to clarify.  What do you mean.  Grown?

Well I'm not sure.  There's just something different.  Something in the way you talk and the things you talk about.

Oh that.   Yes.  Do you want to know why that's different?  Why I don't really care about Billy Joe's ex-girlfriend or what Sally is up to now?  It really has nothing to do with me at all.

He's made a mess of my heart you see.  It's being pulled in a million places.  He's opened my eyes and this is what I've seen.  That people.  That everyone, everyone, everyone is lonely.  And that everyone has a little afraid in them.  And a little uncertainty and a little need to be seen.  So I do not care to hear about the other people.  About their mess and sadness and stupidity and their can you believe they did that things.  I would like to hear this: are you making it.  Are you so loving Him.  Are you still standing.  Or are you on the brink.

Oh.  The brink.  It's a scary place to be.  Teetering between laughter and sobs.  Light and dark.  Between sanity and that too close moment of having lost it. 

I think the brink is what changes people.  Greys their hair and crinkles their eyes.  And I also think this: that being grown up has nothing to do with the way you carry yourself and the dexterity you have with the wine menu.  I think being grown is simply being aware of Him.  The end.

That is where I'm traveling to, that is how I want to grow.  With the brink always a glance away.

My dad interrupts me.  I brought him a cookie at work today.  I left it on his desk and wrote I love you old man on a post it and stuck it to his computer screen.  He lets me know that his office thought that I was Tania, my younger, younger sister.  Apparently I'm not as grown as everyone seems to think.  That's God putting me in my place.

K boss.  I got it.  Menu for the rest of my life: growing pains and highwaters.  Fabulous.  Let's go.