The Daily Grace
The Daily Grace

this is the moment

Nov 18, 2014 | god & grace | 8 comments

studio

I HAVE HAD IT on my mind for two weeks now, the sentiment of a writing shared with me by my sweetest of friends, Courtney. I love this one a little more than most, she wrote in the email, a comment that let me know right away I was the recipient of something special. We tend to be moved by the same sorts of things, Courtney and I, so I took a seat in a quiet spot, breathed in, and hit the open button on my laptop.

It was an offering from Hannah Brencher, a blogger with such an effortless writing style I find myself sinking into her paragraphs like they’re a soft, old easy chair. “I feel like I already missed Christmas,” it began, and I read along, thinking with every sentence: I know. I know. And then I got to this line:

I’m scared of missing the point. I’m scared of always rushing to get somewhere, onto the next somewhere, so that I never fully arrive anywhere.

Oh do I know.

~~~~~~

I’VE HAD THIS SAME DISCUSSION with every girlfriend I have near my (unimaginable) age of 55. “Do you feel it, too? Do you feel the jitters inside, the anxiousness that tumbles and rolls and keeps you feeling behind? Like no matter what it is you’re doing, there’s always something else you should be doing? Somewhere else you need to be. And you’d damn well better Get To It.

It’s an emotion that might have been easier to understand in our 30s and 40s, when our lives were stretched beyond recognition in the tug-of-war between work responsibilities and those small, needy, insatiable children at home. On top of that was housekeeping, and laundry, and grocery shopping, and cooking, and well, you know the (on and on) drill. We still have many of those things to tend to in our 50s, of course, but it is more on our own terms. More in our own control, somehow.

Which makes this feeling of anxiousness rising all the more disconcerting.

~~~~~~~

HANNAH TALKS ABOUT the rush to Christmas, and I know it is the perfect metaphor for the point she is making. We plan and shop and make and wrap and decorate and bake in a frenzy that crescendos toward an end goal—a perfect, magical, oh-look-at-that-the-snow-just-started-to-fall Christmas day. And we’re so focused on that “out there” payoff that we fail to take in the wonder and glory of the many sparkling magic moments God gives us all along the way.

She ends with a line that hollowed me out when I read it. We have all the time, she says, all the time we thought we never had. So let’s take that time and count the glittering objects around us, let’s hold hands and count them one by one.

Let’s just pretend that it can’t get better than this right here.

Oh, girl.

Let’s just pretend that it can’t get better than this right here.

Does that get to you the way it gets to me? I imagine sinking into my beautiful life with this moment-to-moment thought on my heart. Letting my soul be filled to overflowing. Not holding back a single second, never spending even a tiny blink thinking “I’m getting ready” for something way more grand than that which is all around me right now.

Because this moment, this moment now, sitting in a green chair on a Monday night, the world fading to dark outside, the fire popping and crackling in front of me as I write—how beautiful it is to look at this as a sparkling moment. How lovely to hear God’s voice telling me, as he told Hannah:

Breathe. Look. Take it in, my beloved. It’s all there now, in this moment. I’ve placed it there for you. There’s no place you need to rush. There’s no other place for you to be. This— this is all yours, it’s all for you. It is enough. Be there now, and simply breathe it in.

XXOO

8 Comments

  1. Courtney

    LOVE.

  2. Rosie

    Your one sentence hit me and I realized,”It is enough.” It is. Thank you.

  3. Jean McElroy

    Maybe I’ll stop and breathe today!!! Thanks Cathy!

  4. Sharon

    Big Sigh! Grateful to have you as my friend. You are a true blessing! Thank you!!

  5. Julie

    I’m breathing in the peace, breathing out joy. So beautiful. Thank you, friend!

    • Cathy

      So glad. Thank YOU, friend!

  6. Cheryl

    Oh, my! Wow!!! Just … WOW!! Thank you, Cathy! What a blessing you are!

    • Cathy

      Yes, Hannah’s perspective really hit me somewhere deep! So happy it resonated with you, too. Thank you, Cheryl!

Cathy Rigg Headshot

Hi. I’m Cathy.

This is a blog about writing, creative living, and grace in the everyday. It’s my hope this little spot on the internet will be for you a place of quiet and reflection, a source for inspiration, and a reminder there’s beauty all around—we simply need to keep our hearts open to see it. Thank you for being here with me.

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