Letting My Wings Dry

I’ve been quiet for a long time.

If I was to be slightly more honest than that, I’d tell you that I’ve been more than just quiet: I’ve been hiding.

I don’t love having that reality as part of my story. I never had been one to shy away from a challenge, people, the world, or any part of being alive…until I was.

Ecclesiastes 3 has been somewhat of a comfort to me in this:

1For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
5b a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
7b a time to keep silence, and a time to speak…

I’ve been refraining from embracing, and I’ve been silent.

Yet throughout this summer, I’ve felt something shifting within me, as if a part of me was saying, “Not anymore!” I suspect it may have been the Spirit of the Lord within me saying, “Girl, you’ve got to live.”

To be honest, I didn’t know I hadn’t been.

Sure, I chafed against the silence at first, but over time, I found a lot of richness in the solitude. I learned a lot about myself. I discovered God in a way I had never known Him before. I found a freedom and safety, and even delight, in the times when I was in my house all by myself. It was kind of fun, actually. At least most of the time.

If everything is a season, as Ecclesiastes states, then I think that this was the summer my silent season began to expire – in a similar way that milk does. You know how it is: at first, you’re not quite sure it’s bad. You sniff, uncertain, and then drink it anyway, hoping it was fine. By the next day, though, it becomes clear. That milk has soured.

So it was with my solitary season. Things that previously had delighted me began to feel a little off, but I wasn’t sure why. This happened increasingly until one nondescript day in late June when I casually stated, “I think I’m going to have to rethink my entire life.”

Apparently, that was the exact invitation the Spirit of Jesus was waiting on.

I was plunged into a time of intense wrestling. Rethinking one’s entire life is no small thing. It stirs up a lot of identity questions: Who am I? What am I doing with my life? What would I want to do? What am I even good at? Would anyone even care?

Looking back, I think it may have been the exact struggle I needed to break free from my cocoon.

I still have a lot of questions, and I’m not completely sure what I’m aiming for yet. But here I am, sitting on the edge of my cocoon, in the sunshine, letting my wings dry.

It’s kind of nice.

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 
~ 1 John 3:2