quiet.

Lately, I've been coming up to bends in the road. Stoplights, signs, and roadblocks have been greeting me. As we drive home from ballet at nights, my thoughts are spinning faster than the wheels on the car, each as bright and insistent as the headlights on the freeway, racing by before you can blink.

What am I supposed to do with my life?

I've come to the point where the reality of life coming quicker than I want it to hits me harder than a semi-truck. I suppose it sounds silly, coming from someone my age. But lately, even more than before, I've begun to realize that life is anything but lengthy. Every moment is precious.

Every second counts.


We have but one life -- one life to give. To give our all. But where do we give our all? In what do we give our all? To who?



I can't answer all the questions that I'm constantly considering, but I do know this with every fiber in my body to the very core of my being. We are to give our all to Jesus. No matter what we do in life, we are to live every moment in the reality that we are loved by our Savior, and that because of that love, we are to love others and to live vividly -- to be lights. Salt in this world that has become so terribly polluted.



But I wonder sometimes...



Lord, what do you want me to do? What is my purpose?



I have so many things that I love. Photography, writing, art, music, ballet, graphic/web design...and the list goes on. I see so many paths for my future that I could travel on -- different avenues, each with their own names. But Lord, which is the one that I'm to go and follow? Which path is the one you've placed for my life?



Above all, I want to walk with my Savior all my days. And in the end of my life, to look back and think, "I have given my all -- I have nothing left to give." I yearn to someday hear, "Well done, my good and faithful servant, with whom I am well pleased." To think of that makes my heart swell.



I want so desperately to do what the Lord is calling me to do. But right now...I don't know what it is. I have to allow myself to wonder.



Right now, I can only prepare myself for the future, while still living fully today. Slowly, day by day, I can whittle down what I love most. Which passions are fully blooming and which have stopped flowering. I'll always have their fragrance but their blossoms won't stay. I need to find which of my passions have taken root. Those that are staying.



So today, I'm trying to live in the quiet. To hear His voice. To slow down the spinning, spinning wheels and listen till I feel like my ears will break. To be still. And wonder.




In the quiet.