In between parties and catching up, I decided to slip away to a special place. It's a little park and network of trails situated right below Monticello (you can actually walk all the way up there, which I've done a few times and is really fun!) and it's such a peaceful, beautiful place to go.
It was right before my 4th year of college that I discovered it, and it quickly became my oasis when I needed to get away. I'd go often - sometimes with pop music and running shoes, sometimes with a friend, but most often with my bible and journal and pen. I'd go and walk a long ways, praying the things that elsewhere go stuck in my throat or seemed too hard to say.
When I walked around there this weekend I thought about all the different things I'd brought to that place to hand over to God. I'd come there bringing a lot of fear, a lot of apprehension, a lot of questions, and a lot of hope. I brought tears sometimes, because I felt so uncertain. I brought tears sometimes because I felt so glad.
I'd been to that place as a thousand different Emily's, with a thousand different dreams and opinons.
And in realizing that, I realized that there is something special about a physical place. It's special because we can return to it.
We can come back, anytime we want, any way we are, and there is our place -- returnable, waiting for us.
This is one of the qualities of God that I love the most I think, that like a physical place, He is something we can return to. Throughout out various changes and travels, He's a home for our wandering, vagabond selves.
He's a place we know we've left a thousand times, and come back a thousand times differently.
And I think it's love, really, that's always asking us to make that return, and that makes it so sweet when we do.
0 comments:
Post a Comment