Undeserving open spaces

I feel like I can breathe. I feel like myself again.

I've been processing a lot over the last few days, a little puzzled at where this unbelievable, peaceful, overflowing JOY has come from. I've been downright hyper and silly.

I think I see where the discontent started. I turned 30, finished school, and suddenly thought it was time to put my big girl pants on, take control of my life, and take matters into my own hands. I started job searching, started online dating. Let's get on with it. Let's make things happen. I'm tired of waiting. I'm not saying any of these things is bad in itself. But this discontent started rolling in, this "I'm not enough" settled deep in my chest, and I lost my joy.

Fast forward nearly a year later. A year of hopeful anticipation mixed with striving and impatience. Mountains of both rejection and rejecting, crying and seeking.

I find myself in this glorious open space. Literally and figuratively. Just behind my house there is this wide open space with snow covered mountains that I'm pretty sure were put there just for me, and I can BREATHE. It's been like a healing balm on my soul. And I think I've figured out why. I didn't do a single thing to get this space. Literally, not one thing. I didn't ask for the space, I didn't look for the space, I didn't earn the space; all I did was say yes, and I even said yes before I saw it! It's this tremendous gift that I didn't strive for or seek out. He gave it to me because He delights in me. And as I look back even further I can see that the greatest blessings in my life have not been things I have sought out or planned. China, Colorado, Lucy. Each one was just an opportunity to say yes and go on an adventure, to focus on the journey and not the destination. It has renewed my faith in His timing and His ways. It has renewed my hope, not only in things to come, but that truly in each season of life He is good and He is enough.

And so all the big questions still remain. Nothing is remotely settled.

But for now, I've got this JOY and this stranger called contentment, and in this moment, it's certainly enough.