As I write this post, I’m sitting on my back porch. It’s a sleepy Sunday afternoon and there’s a sweet, almost cool breeze blowing through. It reminds me of why I always wanted to live in Virginia. It also makes me feel nostalgic for home. No matter where I am, my earliest memories are the ones I go back to on a peaceful day like today.  Have I ever told you that I grew up in Mississippi? I have now lived elsewhere longer than I actually lived there, but I still call myself a Mississippi girl. I never feel all that far from the thick scent of pine and red clay. It’s funny, actually, when I first moved to Virginia I adored the sweet smell of what I described as “trees and dirt”. All these years later, I realize that is what Mississippi smells like too …. different trees and different dirt. I just didn’t appreciate it when I lived there. I couldn’t identify it until I was hundreds of miles away.

     The summer after my freshman year of college I got a job as a summer camp staffer at a camp in Virginia. I had been there as a camper twice and the place was really special to me for many reasons. I was over-the-moon excited. I was also really freaked out. It was the first time I would be leaving home alone for an extended period of time….and it was out of state. I repeatedly asked anyone who would listen, “If you were going to Virginia for three months, what would you take?”. I drove them crazy. Just before I left, two of my best friends made a hysterical video called “If you were going to Virginia for three months, what would you take?”. I watched it over and over again. It started with just the two of them on the couch having a conversation and ended with the two of them basically buried in the contents of one friend’s entire bedroom. It wasn’t very helpful but made me laugh every single time I watched it. What I would give to still have that video….  each of us now live in separate states, connected only by social media. When I think about that video, it feels like the end of childhood. At the time, it was just two friends cheering me up with extreme, well-timed silliness. I am glad, sometimes, that we can’t see very far into the future. As much as I am happy with the direction my life has taken, it would have been excruciating in the moment to realize life would never be the same again after that summer.

     Lately, I have felt an urge, a calling if you will, to do something hard. I find myself asking people the question, “If you were me, how would you do…?”. I know I’m driving them crazy. No one can answer the question for me. I half expect to get a silly video that won’t be much help. I really want an easy button, but one doesn’t exist. It will be tedious work and there are zero guarantees of success. I keep being reminded of the story in the Bible where the Israelites were lead out of Egypt and encountered the Red Sea. God had a plan to deliver them from the Egyptian armies that were pursuing them. He told Moses to lift up his rod and stretch out his hand over the sea to divide it so the people could cross.  I wonder how much doubt Moses had? He ultimately did what he was told to do and it all went according to plan. If I were him, though, I would wonder why God didn’t just part the waters. Why did Moses need to stretch out his hand over the water? Why was there action required on his part? That is how I feel about my calling. I want to know why I need to act when I can’t see far enough into the future to know how it will turn out. How silly would Moses have felt if he stood there at the water’s edge, reached his hand over the waters and the Egyptians rushed in and murdered all of them?  No one will die if I don’t do what I feel I’ve been told to do, but I can’t know that anyone will be saved either. I feel like I am in an odd spot.

     Why is it that we waste so much energy, sometimes, on worrying about the future, when all that is guaranteed is this very moment?  Do you have an urge, a calling, something you feel like you really need to do? Are you, like me, hesitant to just reach your hand out over the water, not knowing how things will turn out? I think we can all benefit from remembering our humble beginnings. Whether our childhoods were traumatic or not, the thing we all have in common about those days is we weren’t in control and one day always lead to the next one. We dreamed of the future but lived in the moment. Somehow in our lifetimes we start fixating on the future and squandering the moment. I think Moses reached out his hand over the water because the best opportunity for success didn’t lie in overthinking what he had been told to do. He just did the thing. I think our best opportunity for success lies in following his example.

     Why don’t we, this week, take a trip down memory lane? Let’s take the time to sniff out the “pine and red clay” in our lives. Let’s take time, with the benefit of hindsight, to identify times we put one foot in front of the other and it lead to good things. Let’s recognize the times where we just did the thing and use that as fuel to launch us from the odd spots where we find ourselves. Are you in?