Shift

I stepped out the back door that Sunday morning, I felt it.  That shift.  It was a Saturday 6 years earlier that I had first felt a shift like that.  On the same day.  My birthday.  On this morning, a cool breeze hit me. It brought back memories. I see how far He has brought me.  How very much has changed.  I felt a mix of excitement and anticipation this time.  Six years ago on my birthday I started this journey.  I had no idea what I would be facing our who I would become.  I didn't really even know I had become a traveler.  I'm a different girl than I was back then.  I have seen things that God used to hollow out that place in my heart.  Things that change you forever. That very same feeling came again.  This has been a life altering year for me.  In so many ways a back to square one year.  The stripping away and restructuring left me feeling more out of sorts than I care to admit sometimes.  I had high hopes that birthday morning. I still do.  But I had no idea with all the shifts and changes that death of another kind would face me one week later.  Death that would devastated and I would need to be the hand holder like I have never been before.  I know that death ushers in life, no matter if you are the soul passing from here to the eternal or you are one of the souls left behind.  I have seen the other side of a death.  Things seem colorless, days feel dry and arid. Nothing falls in to place. I could be terrified.  Actually I am quite anxious....but He said be anxious for nothing.  That hard in the wake of someone loosing a parent, dealing with all the aftermath of closure, new jobs, less money and a whole lot of unanswered questions. Yes.....but what is it that I know?  What is it that whispered to me that morning marking the anniversary of my birth?  You were made for hard baby girl......you can do hard things.  Yes.  He created me for that.  Sometimes the hardest thing is feeling unseen and perhaps like these littlest of things seem to be so inconsequential.  But they are not.  This is the way He made me.  Sometimes the smallest things are the very greatest things.  The unnoticed.  But He notices.  And He asked me so long ago would I please?  And I said yes I would.  These are the things that make me, complete me and remind me that every person is important.  Every task great and small matters in the sight of God.  There are times when the smallest become the biggest and there is a time and a season for everything He set under the sun.  Yes....that hand, that quiet sit with a loved one, the sharing of tears when words aren't necessary, that ability to do the hard things is the loveliest of things.  Because when you are faced with the shortness of this life and loose someone so close, no one cares what car you drive or how much money is in your bank account.  They care that you just showed up.  He reminds me yet again that this is they way.  Things get torn down but He builds them back.  Stronger and more beautiful that we could ever hope for or imagine. Thankful.