It’s anniversary time again, although this last year I realized how many of those I have throughout the entire year. This is the big one, December 22nd, three years since I was drawn out and seemed to have my entire world shatter around me. I consider that may be the reason I am so emotional lately, but I don’t think that’s the case. This year is different.

Yes, there is still hurt, healing is a process after all. But there has been hope and forgiveness, all on a learning curve. There has been promise and blessings and growth. I am not the same woman I was three years ago when I opened my door to the violent news of another’s actions that would alter my life. Not just my life but my boys, my friends, even to some degree my co-workers. No, this year I think the pain is growing pains.

This year has been ever changing, in my life, in the lives of my community and family, in our country (talk about trauma, the electoral race was insane and I already hate politics!). The world around me has moved at breakneck speed, and I am exhausted trying to keep up. I have felt lost in the in-between watching my close community move forward, knowing my call, and wondering where God is taking all of this. Blessed and cared for, but still sometimes alone and bewildered. Apprehensive, knowing more change is coming. Amazed, knowing God has given me dreams of a house and a ministry, but wondering when (and how) these dreams will come to fruition.

Part of me wants to charge forward, part of me fears racing ahead of God. In-between I sit, like a butterfly out of it’s chrysalis waiting for my wings to fill out and be strengthened. Hanging on a branch wondering, when do I fly? Fearing, what if I fall?

Maybe I shouldn’t fly at all.

Yet I am called to fly, maybe not at the moment I desire, but still called. And if I fall, the one who called me to fly will catch me, He always does. Nothing in this moment looks like what I had seen, but then it rarely does. Faith requires standing on the coastline, unable to see beyond the fog that has settled over the ocean, yet knowing the ocean is out there and the creator of the universe has it all under his control. Faith is knowing that when that fog lifts, my wings will be strong enough to fly.