I took a day to go to the small city that is larger than our small town and it is helping to take the edge off a little.  A little because I ended here, at this coffee shop looking up stores from big cities that I can not drive to and debating shipping charges and the way the material might look in the light.  And I can feel the pout growing inside me and this day that was supposed to be a break and a curtain hunt is turning into something a bit more introspective.  I'm lining up the same, tired questions and checking myself for changes, shifts, gives and I am right back where I've been all along-- mostly comfortable on the outside and just a little frustrated.

When I don't take a pause to check in I get to this: three Bible studies and two mentees and one youth group night with the promise of Sunday school on Sunday mornings and house parties and coffee dates and another client out of town and then finally, a trip away looking for curtains because if I could just find the right striped material to hang in the living room that space would feel right and then I would feel right, right?

Last time this was all over a cake plate.  

Eventually I get back to what I know-- that wherever I am He has me and if I repeat that to myself over and over it starts to mean what it should to my heart and I stop over committing and time filling and late night Netflix watching, hopefully.  Hopefully I find this space again: where life is not a calendar and I do not crave Target on Sunday evenings and my angsty wandering heart remembers to bed down where I am.

Maybe He has me here for the rest of my life and He’ll be having me raise children in a small town by the lake with a great man and we’ll sigh every November when the cold rushes in and breathe easy every June when the rains stop and the mud dries and stop sleeping in August because the days are so long and perfect and the nights are spent around fire and we’ll grow old together in this constant sleepy town and He will grow us and the people we love and that would be alright.

Maybe there’s something else, but right now there’s this and it is October and I have a beautiful kitchen to bake in and the trees are going wild and there is the promise of new boots and lovely friendships and husband has shaved his beard so that is exciting and new, too. 

Also, I found curtains.  And they are on their merry way.