Kinship and Solitude

 Jan - July 2025 Archive

Shadow of the Blinding Light

There is such comfort in real communion, letting thoughts spill out like soft waves... 

While passing something today that felt like a familiar stone, perhaps, I felt that touch again, of that kind of Love... not the simple kind, but the kind that lingers in the spaces where its absence echoes. The one that broke me, and left a spring in its place. The one that gave me everything but itself, and whose grief I held close even as it tore me... when I had yet to realise that more of what I longed for was waiting for me on the other side of the pain I thought was my only memento. 

It’s strange how joy and sorrow can sit side by side, how the warmth of connection can leave a shadow when the moment passes. It's not just missing a person, although it can so often be that, too, but the ache of connection itself; the craving for more when there’s nothing left to hold onto but memory. 

And the questions that cut me -- what would I say if I could go back? What would I do differently? 

I didn’t run from it this time, though. I sat with it, breathed through it, and named it for what it was.

There was a shift... small but sacred. I felt what it’s like to be both the child crying out and the arms holding that child. To know that even in my moments of kicking and screaming, I was carried, not just by God, but by grace itself. It’s not about being unbroken; it’s about being held, even in the breaking.

Then came the morning... a fragile dawn after a restless night. My heart is still raw around the edges, but then, an unexpected gift... like the universe had pressed pause, offering me a breath I didn’t know I needed. With tea in hand and a quiet sense of victory, I realized that even in the small, unexpected moments, there’s grace. Not because everything was fixed, but because I’d made it through another storm. I carried my heart through the night, through the ache, through the unraveling... and again, I’m still here.

I'm still walking.

Days of Hunger

My Lord has brought me to green pastures and I shall not want... and yet I do. There is ample grass but I long for broken bread. 

I am alone.. and yet it is preferable to when I was alone with others, and I have no intentions of going back there, either. I walk with God on my path and yet I long for someone to hold up a mirror, or introduce Him to me again based on the facet that only they can provide, and in turn, to do the same. My stomach has begun to growl in its hunger for encounter with the evocative and the intimate-- not because I cannot sing and forage, but because voices are meant to be answered and food is better shared.

I can feed myself now, meeting God in the silence, the wind, the rain, and oh... the Sun. I wait for God under the light of the stars, even as the moon is hidden from me, because I have learned to forage for light.

But it is no feast, no festival. 

 

“home” and Home

Everything I need to feel at home I already have within me... the rest is reminders, but they are treasured nonetheless. I do not need to know God's plan to know that it is good. 

In all things I do my best, and I know it is all I can do. This is both a comfort and disappointment, at times, but at least I know that once I have toed every line I have no regrets. May God forgive me for the rest.

 

Musings on Time

I regret that I so often have good plans for personal atonement-- seeking healing, taking a moral inventory, orienting my heart-- but when I take time to rest I would rather doze off than keep to my intentions. Or daydream. 

Rather than judge myself too harshly, though, I wonder if this is simply part of being human… or perhaps a sign that I am allowing the rest of my life to ask too much of me to begin with. I have recently come to believe that there is no such thing as "not enough time," and that all our temporal woes or sense of lack are more indicative of misaligned priorities.

Fortunately, there does seem to be something reciprocal about the alignment of the heart in this... as if one small offering or surrender can create space for the Spirit to enter. And with that entry comes a fuller sense of life… which, in turn, stirs the heart to surrender more deeply.

 

Fog Walking

I have reached the end of myself. There is no rebel in me, no retreat, either, but I am tired. 

Not all miles are measured in distance, a friend said, but the path ahead has become unclear. Perhaps, though, it is indicative that my perception of control of the future has simply become more true. Regardless, I am not frightened, just surrounded. Not lost, but certainly blinded.

I sat by the roadside this morning, not because I needed to stop, but to think about how far I’ve come. I thought about how love has shaped me. How truth, even when costly, has guided me. How hope, even when dim, has not left me.

It seems I am to carry no map today, but I don't know if I need it anymore.. A sense that forward now exists, and perhaps that is enough. Perhaps it is a blessing.

 

Gathering Breath

Today the air is soft, the overcast world is hushed, and I find myself held in a space between departure and return.

I have spent the last few days away, with no need to carry the world on my shoulders, and a temporary laying down of burdens I sometimes forget I even bear. But this morning, a familiar ache arrived alongside a providential blowing by of a leaf from somewhere unexpected but familiar. Perhaps it followed me. And it carried a single message: the road home still leads to weight. 

And yet… perhaps this ache is not a warning, but a witness to what it means to carry meaning.

Perhaps this fog is not confusion, but a mercy-- a way to soften my gaze so I do not rush past the holy tension of in-between. I do not yet know what to hope for, beyond the quiet faithfulness of God. And that’s alright... There is no answer today, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

For now, I listen to the silent urging: Be. Be patient. Be kind to the shape you are in.
I will face it all again, when it is time, but not before I’ve gathered my breath and let the Spirit aerate the soil of my being.

 

Threshold of Return

I've stopped at an old inn today, and woke up full of sleep and food. Now I’m watching the rain, and the world is waiting somewhere on the other side of it. 

Someday soon, I’ll return to that life I now realise I’d never had the space to see from the outside until now. It was out of loss that I was called to wandering, and so without question I did this last thing I had the ability to do-- to set one of my feet before the other. But this gentle interruption offers me more than I expected… It gives me room to breathe. To listen. To ask the questions I never paused long enough to name.

And now my opened eyes see something deeper: that my life cannot be planned right now, but it must be prepared for. Life and fate cannot be controlled, but must be met in faith and trust. 

What kind of heart will I bring home?

And I pray: a spacious one. A truthful one. A heart that can answer the “already, but not yet” with faith instead of fear. A heart that listens more than it strives, and trusts God to finish what He began.

When I return to the path, after the rain, I will return to pressure, but one thing is certain: I do not return the same. I will return softened by stillness and sharpened by distance. 

Much time has passed since I set out, and the grief that once threatened to unravel me now lives lives in a softer place. No longer demanding resolution, love now carried as a prayer, not a possession, teaches me how to be alone without being lost.

I see my world now with clearer eyes. 

I see a calling that is not only to something I serve, but something that serves me, too, and shapes me into someone more whole.

 

An Old Rubicon

The rain has stopped and I stand at the water’s edge, feeling something ancient stir. There is a weight in my core, both light and heavy, and asking to be named. But I don't yet know its name, its nature, or what I am being called to-- only that it must be carried. This is a burden, yes, but also a treasure... A seed of something holy, wrapped in silence and longing. Perhaps it is enough, for now, to simply carry it; to let it be felt, and not yet explained. 

Last night I was thinking about how I might make plans to leave it all, quietly. Not out of bitterness, but old habit-- the belief that to walk forward with this burden meant walking alone. But the stillness spoke, and I realised that Christ did weep in Gethsemane without an angel. He not carry His cross without the sudden appearance of Simon. How many others have found me and offered bread in my wilderness, as God thwarted my naive attempts to escape myself, others, or protect those I love from having to love me, too? How many times has God proved, despite my fear and stubbornness, that I was not meant to be alone? 

Loneliness can masquerade, too, as calling to solitude, and solitude can mask the quiet terror of anyone being there to see me fall, should I do so. But I have been seen, challenged, validated, and taught by those who have not only walked beside me, but wait nearby, refusing to let me slip away. Therefore, I write this now not to record a certainty, but to mark the moment I chose, in faith, to move not away from others, but toward them. Not away from my true call, but deeper into its mystery.

I am reminded of a time when there was something in me that resisted this more completely... Not because I was prideful, but because I was and have always been afraid to let others suffer for my sake. Afraid to be too much, or that if they really saw the weight I carried, they would turn away. But that fear was just a foothold for sin. 

What a folly then, too, to think even for a moment that I am the only one walking, and carrying. There are others beside me; some with maps, some with songs, some with wounds of their own. Perhaps I may someday discover that I give others bread, too... If I dare imagine. My road ahead will still be hard, but I will not pretend I am unloved, or further dishonor the ones who choose to love me by pretending I don’t need them.