Beauty, Pain, and Pie

At first it was the stability, the predictability that got me. The concrete had nothing on the mountains and streams of Arizona, but the stability took the cake and left me with a longing I hadn't felt in a while. Friends with babies and houses with sofas showed the great divide between my (so utterly) single life and theirs. It is absolute beauty in both seasons, but it is the difference between freedom and tiny kisses, long hikes and quiet storybooks. So different, these seasons, and yet both so fantastic.

But again, my heart longed for the stability, the predictability. It longed for the office of a professor, the deadlines and expectations. It longed for cute furniture and babies and a straight path. Though there is nothing else I want to do with my life right now, the rocky nature of the path with my students sometimes leaves me standing in a (proverbial) canyon wondering, is the end really worth it? Is there even an end at all? 

That is what I think gets me. The months of heart-pouring and deep commitment only for them to disappear. To walk away. To get swept up in the promises of drugs, tradition, and earthly excuses for love. Will they return? Is this the end? There is a vision (I can see it so clearly!) for what their lives can be (it is so easy!), yet their vision has been covered with dark glasses that blind them. That make them believe that they truly are unable to do more than stumble and fall.

And my heart longs for stability. 

So I do what anyone would do in this place.
I ate pie. 

Actually I ate a lot of pie. I chased chocolate pie with cherry pie. At a place called The Pie Hole. With one of my besties.

It was heaven.

And she told me of the hope that I am not capable of building. The hope that can only come from God, who really is good in all things. And she told me that the greatest moment in God's plan, the death and resurrection of Jesus, was also one of great trauma. So is there not beauty in pain, and God in the midst of suffering?

So I chewed my pie (and my other pie) and I got all teary-like (because my feelings are deeper than the sea) and I began to see the stable path amidst the unstable one. The canyon opened up a bit to show me that in time I will have the family, the babies, the furniture and the house. And for now in the midst of the hikes, the travel, the heart-pouring and time-consuming, there is too .such.great. beauty.

And what (i must say)
 is God 
if not the beauty 
in the midst of each season? 

Comments

  1. UnknownJuly 10, 2014 at 9:06 AM

    I love you and your love for pie. Your words are beautiful, as is your life.

    ReplyDelete

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