Sarah

Last week my grandmother surprised us all by having a stroke.  She is doing better for the moment—so far, she can swallow again and she can laugh, but she can’t talk—and my mom and aunt flew to be with her.  “If you can come, you’ll be glad you did,” my mother told me yesterday on the phone.  “It is being a very sweet time.”  I bought my ticket the same day.

I am unsure what the future holds for me.  Funny I should feel like saying that now.  When are we ever sure what the future holds for us?  See Grandma’s stroke above.  Somehow routines and relationships give me a feeling of knowingness.  In DC, I can pretend that I know what the future holds for me; for instance, eating chocolate chip cookie dough with Stephanie and dinner with Manfriend.  If I were staying in DC, my money would be on those things.

This next life move is cracking those guesses-posing-as-certainties wide open.  Life in Las Vegas feels unknown.  How will I survive a year with no cherry blossoms, no leafy canopies, no Potomac?  Life after Las Vegas is unknown.  Where will a 30-year-old Sarah find a place to lay her head?

I am raw for comfort.  I find myself singing a lot of Dixie Chicks these days.  Specifically, the song “Wide Open Spaces.” She needs wide open spaces / Room to make her big mistakes.

I sang this to my roommate Steph a couple of weeks ago.  She said, “You’re from New York.  When did you fall in love with wide open spaces?”

This is the only narrative I have found comfort in.  I am leaving a house, a job, a proximity to my parents, a city, a blog I love so much, for what?  For the chance to bust open my heart and rely on God.  Can I build my own Zion in the wilderness?  Find people to love and people to love me?  Can I find a life that is not predominantly loneliness, or a life in which loneliness brings patience, to do a perfect work on my heart?

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.  Probably yes.  As Manfriend says, whatever sends us to our knees is a blessing.  Whatever prompts us to pray is a blessing from God.

I do have faith He will hear us.

And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.

And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.  (Isaiah 58:11-12)

Please, oh God, water me with blessings.  I am praying in the desert to thee.