My Time And Purpose Under Heaven
This is my season under heaven, my time to grow, to struggle, to trust and to fight.
This is my time to be born, to be just Connie, not Mom, not Grandma, not daughter, not sister, not even wife those are roles that I know how to play, I can don those hats and assume those roles but now is my time to look into the mirror of my heart, bare headed, who is this person without role to play? This is my time to find out.
This is my time to die. To die to self, to put away the persistent little voice that says, “But what is to become of me???” This is my time to worry only about what happens today, this hour, sometimes just this moment. This is my season of today.
This is my time to plant, I chose the seeds, I chose what to cultivate, I chose the harvest. I chose to plant the seed of hope, I chose to plant the seed of faith, I chose to rejoice in the bud, in the flower and cast my eyes away from the withering leaf.
This is my time to uproot. I will uproot the weeds that grow and twine around the tender shoots of faith and hope. I dig with bare fingers in the moist soil to get every tiny root of fear, of cynicism, of despair. I will uproot the angry nettles of rage that grow so quickly, the self-pity that covers the earth like soft green moss. What’s the harm isn’t it entitled to grow? Really it’s rather pretty, not ugly like anger or prickly like cynicism not poisonous like despair. But the blanket of insidious fungus slowly chokes out my beautiful buds of hope, my blossoms of faith, I will uproot it.
This is my time to kill, to kill the guilt. What’s nailed to cross will stay on cross, I will not climb Calvary’s hill yet again only to pick it up and take it home with me. It is time I leave it there.
This is my time to heal. To be healed, to see my husband healed, to search for healing, to embrace healing, and to pray for healing.
This is my time to tear down, tear down the walls of doubt, tear down the self inflicted walls of isolation, and tear down the walls of regret. I will clear the ground; clean the space where once they stood. Because now is the time to build, to build bridges rather than walls to build shelter rather than fortress, to build a gate of trust rather than dig a moat of fear.
This is not my time to mourn or weep, weeping can wait, I will embrace it when it’s time comes but not yet, not now. Now is my time to laugh. This is my time to be joyful, my time to meet smile with smile, to welcome the humor and absurdity of living every day. This is my time to dance, perhaps without rhythm or grace but to dance never the less.
This is my time to scatter, to scatter pieces of myself throughout my journal; here you will find the mundane treasures of my heart. It is also my time to gather, to gather my memories to sort through them and stir them up. It is my time to ponder on the startling bits of memory that this process surprises me with. People, places and feelings that had been so long forgotten.
This is my time to embrace who I am while refraining from judgment.
This is my time to search my mind, my heart, my soul for the stories that need to be told.