Longing to Live + Not Choosing Fog

Today I feel alive.

It seems like little things are what remind me how to feel this way. One moment of being present. One moment of being grateful. One moment of being aware. One moment of being gracious. One moment of being. If you blink you will miss them.

They really aren't that significant, unless you let them be.

Deep inside each of us is a longing to live. Losing touch of that longing seems to happen when we feel like we have messed up too much or we are too messed up or too many messed up things have happened to us. The longing seems to slowly disappear and it feels as if we are sitting alone in a blurry, indecipherable fog. Up is down, left is right, and all that we feel is dizzy and confused.

In this season, more than anything I long to long to live, but I have made a lot of excuses not to. I have been sitting alone in the fog.

As time goes on, as I process and listen and talk and wait, I am realizing something very transformational (and a little scary): Getting out of the fog is a choice that I have to make. Yes, I am justified in my pain. Yes, I need people around me. Yes, utilizing resources is imperative. Yes, God is great enough to sit with me and guide me out. But I have a responsibility in all of these things to choose the truth or choose to remain in the fog becoming increasingly suffocated by its thickness.

If I want that longing to live, I have to choose to live.

It will be (and has been) slow, but I am choosing it more often than not. Not much in this season has changed for me, I still live at home with my parents, my sister, and my husband. I still don't know what I am going to do with my life. I still really don't know what I am most passionate about or where my strengths and gifts will best be used and shared. I still don't have much money or much freedom.

But I do have a choice.

I have a choice to be present. I have a choice to be grateful. I have choice to be aware. I have a choice to be gracious. I have a choice to be.

I don't want to blink and miss out on life.

I want to let one moment at a time be significant and to remind me what it feels to be alive.

Today TJ and I went for a hike in the snow as gentle flakes fell from the sky. It was quiet. It was hard work. It was beautiful. It was cold. It was a breath of fresh air. It was my choice today to live and a reminder to choose that longing.

Gently, from one moment to the next. When we look back we will see each moment strung together and understand just then that indeed, we have lived.