In her low-key, self-isolated summer, she has discovered that her favourite parts of the day are when the sun is just appearing over the horizon and when it is just starting to slip down beyond.
She awakens to her alarm clock, and although she very much likes to sleep, she heeds it. She can sleep later. She doesn’t want to miss the few precious hours of morning coolness.
She steps outside. The sun is coming and the brilliant moon is lingering, wanting her to notice it before it retreats for the day. The morning makes her feel alive. It makes her able to think more clearly and to listen more closely.
She knows that contentment isn’t in her circumstances. It isn’t in the affirmation of others, either. But she finds herself dreadfully unbalanced—one minute retreating to isolation because she does not need anything from “them,” and the next minute craving belonging and attention. What is the answer to the requirement “that we do not fall prey to the ideal of tight-lipped self-sufficiency, that gloomy resolve to take nothing as a gift, or fall into the infantilism of needing constant confirmation.”?[1]
She looks up at the horse-tail clouds in the sky, the sky that is just beginning to wear its brilliant blue, and He breathes the answer on the wind. I AM.
When dusk begins to fall, she again finds a sacred space in the cool of the day.
Her general awareness of the world’s brokenness has been growing. She hears stories. Dark stories of abortion and abuse and death and hate. She cares. She cries. She prays. And then she forgets. Her mind moves to more trivial things. She thinks about HERSELF and what SHE wants, how that makes HER feel, what SHE deserves, what that person might be saying about HER when they say that, and about how this thing isn’t for HER because it’s not true to who SHE is. She is sick of being so full of herself. Is anyone powerful enough to take her beyond herself?
She reaches the end of the row of trees that shade her from the evening light. And beyond the shade, there is the answer, painted into the pink and orange fire of the sunset. I AM.
In her world there are many voices. They speak things that are true and things that are close to true and things that she wants to be true. She feels confused about what is true. What is the way? What is the answer to the abundant life she longs for?
She notices an opening through the trees, and the patch of daisies just beyond the opening invites her to come through. She approaches them and breathes in their beauty. His answer dances with the daisies. I AM.
[1] Josef Pieper, Faith Hope Love, 186
Realizing Provision 