I prayed for patience at the beginning of the year and when I said the words, I knew they were dangerous.  I thought, this is the sort of prayer you end up wanting back at times, this is the sort of prayer that will push me harder than I like.  At times.

I was sitting in church on Sunday, in a large church with crowds of people and fog machines and a coffee shop and I was sitting there in the middle of some new song and a prayer shot from my desperation Jesus I have never needed You more.  Please, keep me.  

My father drove us through the mountains and I watched them from the back seat, toes stretched into the wind high above my body, head resting flat with my eyes searching, looking for more than peaks and tall trees and perfect sky.  I don't know what I was looking for, but I think I found it somewhere along the way to Grand Lake.  And then again, later that night, walking down Pearl Street, the thin fabric of my dress and the full smiles of people I love floating all around me, it sunk in.

There is a wonderful plan, alive and breathing and moving me.  And though some primitive, young part wants the plan to be mine, the eternal part of me understands, at times.  He is having His way with the world and because it is not about me, it is completely about me.  The mountains and the trees and the sky, they are mine. 

Right now, this minute, it is mine too.  And this day that is going to turn to night and then wake again, loudly with the birds and the wind and that sun speaking to me from my window- this day is my gift.  I did not know what to do with these days, I was too busy wishing for those days, but now I have a small hold on a small thought that is the corner of a big one and I am beginning to understand.

When He spoke the words that put me together and left that hungry memory in my soul for Him, when He saved me and claimed me, He did more than promise me a new world.  He made me here, unfolding the world gently in the beginning, showing me bits, tiny pieces and on that road a larger piece opened and spoke to my older memory.  He is still making me.

There is a reason for now.  And now is more important than then.  There is something to read in everything I see, in bodies and the earth and roads and voices.  His character is pouring out always before my eyes.  We are all strokes, writing the wonderful plan and I do not want to miss connecting into words that move into eternity.

I woke this morning to their singing, thinking of my father and the words he has told me a thousand times, Tasha, hear the birds?  Aren't they great?  He made them for us, you know.  And this time, my smile really did know.