Buns and seasons and everything in between.

 

Today marks the third day of being sick with huge case of a head/throat/chest cold.

Trying to be a grown up lady has enough  challenges of it's own, but trying to be a sick grown up lady is like hitting an immediate wall of defeat. With mom and dad's house being a thousand or so miles away there are few places to go for refuge and few people you actually feel comfortable asking to take care of you when 

you are just too yucky to get up and take care of yourself. Thank goodness for sisters and boyfriends. I would still be that small, pathetic pile of germ-y mush if it wasn't for them.

I spent my entire day wrapped up in blankets in a coma-like state, and I must say it felt wonderful to just be still. I literally only did 3 things today that required movement. I put my hair into my beloved "pineapple bun" (as my mom used to call it), made some tea, and watered my flowers. Somehow during my day of intense activities and sleeping, sleeping, and sleeping some more I found myself reading out of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes 3

A Time for Everything

 ¹ There is a time for everything,
   and a season for every activity under the heavens:

 ² a time to be born and a time to die,
   a time to plant and a time to uproot,
 ³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
   a time to tear down and a time to build,
 ⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
   a time to mourn and a time to dance,
 ⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
   a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
 ⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
   a time to keep and a time to throw away,
 ⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
   a time to be silent and a time to speak,
 ⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
   a time for war and a time for peace. 

This passage got me thinking about what's going on in my life right now and the season I am in. 

I feel like this season would be most easily understood as my season of gray.

Gray because I feel a bit foggy and uncertain where my life is headed.

Gray because I feel like, for some reason, this is my time to just exist and not to do.

I feel like there was a lot of tearing down in most parts of my previous, familiar life. Perhaps  it was in order to make space for all that is to be rebuilt in the season ahead.

And I'm okay with that. I recognize that there were some things inside of me that needed to be weeded out instead of watered.I recognize that some comforts were taken away in order to create space for some much needed growth. But what I'm not okay with, is the space in between. The empty inside, waiting to be filled again. I'm waiting for all the lose ends of my life to finally come together, but I feel like I'm still knee-deep in the gray, no sense of direction in sight, and still no place to drop my anchor. 

Sometimes it's just exhausting when you feel like you say your prayers only for them to hit the ceiling and fall back on your face. But that is just a feeling, and not reality. God hears and cares and sees and feels. And no ceiling can block what you bring to God. I guess I wrote this post as a reminder to you and to me, to have faith in his timing, believing that there is a time to tear down and  a time to rebuild. And the rebuilding will happen, even if you're still  knee-deep in gray.