Seeing the Far Things

I’m still here, slowly exhaling after a long, long season of the inhale, the consuming of beauty, the untangling of things. Thanks for being here.

I realized today I am developing a habit of forgetting to look forward to things. This is a tragedy. I don’t know if it’s an ADHD thing or just a distracted by life thing, but I’m noticing that lack of anticipation joy I used to feel more often. “Notice”, my word for the year, reminds me. cPTSD has meant that I’ve spent most of my days being very good at noticing what is NOT joyful around me.

I’ve been on the lookout for the next danger, or the next out of control emotion, or the next crisis, even though those are few and far between and I have to remind myself I’m not there anymore. Therapy has helped quiet those voices. God has used experience after experience of safety to rework the ways my body expects things. I can notice, instead, the safety. The relative security. The delight. The good.

I don’t have to assume that if I’m having a really, really great experience that I’ll pay for it with an incoming event of doom and gloom. Or believe the lie that I’m being selfish enjoying a season of rest and being able to care for myself and I will have to be disciplined with a season of intense suffering right after it, instead of realizing those ebbs and flows are just common to life, not one causing the other. Suffering is not a method of divine discipline, it is just human. God is gentle and present and just as gracious in one as in another.

I’m reclaiming, slowly, the noticing of not just what is good NOW but what WILL BE good. I’m letting myself trust that the plans and events I’m looking forward to WILL happen, and even if they don’t, that I don’t need to live in a shell that prepares me for that. I can accept what will MOST LIKELY BE with open hands and joyful glances ahead.

Today, this looks like starting my pack list for a trip to Vancouver Island with a friend close to my heart in a few weeks. It looks like preparing artwork to sell at my friend’s store, putting the prep work in, expecting that I’ll see a return for my efforts, that people will like and want and cherish my art. It looks like packing for a short trip this weekend with my husband, one that is SO LONG overdue, to go retreat and rest for awhile. It looks like being generous with what I have to someone else. It looks a lot like faith. It looks like “lifting my eyes to the hills” again and again.