Wide open

I've come to this place called McCormick Park, a small stretch of grassy and gravel banks along the Yellow Breeches, in a moment of respite before a leap into my senior year professional semester. I sit now and an ant aimlessly crawls across the adjacent page (having just tickled his way down my belly). I pull blanket and journal out of my worn napsack and lean my back against the base of a large tree that spreads branches like arms forming a canopy to encircle me from afternoon sun.  Light glints on the babbling brook and I watch a small leaf drift down from over-hanging limbs until caressed and carried along the cool water's rapids. These are the tiny moments that I want to fill life with, the ones that make me feel nostalgic, wonderful and a light melancholy thoughtfulness that longs to still the heart.

I come here today to ask for life's gifts. To remember similar days back when my toes skimmed seashore and I felt at peace. This time may be a re-creation; a grasping at the more natural posture of summertime but it's also my soul's cry to carry a bit of that pace with me as I adapt to changing tides. These gifts did not end when I folded up the beach chairs and drove off the magical bridge. Yes, many turned to memory and remain only in the pulses of my heartbeat but many wait to be discovered. That is why I sit here on the two day precipice of student teaching. Not to ignore the challenges and grit of this changing time and changing role but to call on my great Gift-Giver so that I may do more than merely survive this stage of my journey. I came to take this cool margin time by the brook to recreate with my Creator where He will re-create me.  To transform the mind that so easily translates work into stress and a job into a chore, to instead send a pulse of love that turns the palms upward to ask to receive. This time to fill with Him so that what I pour out to my kindergarteners, floor, teachers, staff is swollen with love. To fill with Him that my very identity is rooted and established in love so that even my brokenness, my limitations, are still beautiful reminders of grace. To fill with Him so that in this epic chapter of action and impact there remains gift, there remains grace, and I remain wide open to receive.