My little sister commented on my facebook (yes, this is what it has come to) that I’m due for a blog post. Indeed, it’s true. And I apologize to those of you who do check back regularly to see what I’ve gotten into, what I’ve baked, what kind of lesson I’m being taught with the aid of dough and coffee and 18-year-old students misspelling their way to an Associate’s degree.
I’ve had a lot of restless nights lately, with Big Life questions playing on my mind – questions that remain unanswered. But I hold out hope for answers. And the Good thing that is happening now, is an answer to a question I asked a while ago. I think this is how things work with God sometimes. All that stuff about His perfect timing is true, and sometimes “unanswered prayers” (nod to Garth Brooks) are only delayed. The answer may not be the one we were looking for, but it’s always the right one, and often it comes in this sort of cycle, later on, when we’ve moved onto another question, an answer we’ve already asked floats in on a breeze, rather than shaking us like an earthquake, the way we imagined it would.
You know those quotes people throw around about “finding your Passion?” Like that one that goes something like, “Find what makes you come alive and then do that, because what this world needs are more people who have come alive?” (someone please feel free to comment with the correct wording, I’m too lazy to google right now) The thing is, I always read that quote and get this knot in my chest.
What makes me come alive? What is my Passion? Writing, yes. That, I love. But it never feels like enough, because I think when you’re passionate about Words, you have to be passionate about something else, too, or there’s nothing to inspire the words - nothing to mold them around.
And now, somehow, by accident, my Passions have become so clear that I can’t believe I ever missed them: they are Words, People, and any form of Creation and Design. Baking and cooking and sewing and jewelry-making and, in general, making things, not for myself, but for other people.
This news came to me like an epiphany a few days ago, as I spent a day baking bread for my husband and for my friends, and sewing a baby bib for my pregnant housemate. There is nothing that brings me more joy, that inspires me more than using my hands and my eyes and my brain to create something that will bring pleasure to another person.
I should have figured it out a few years ago, when I realized that my stomach flip-flopped every time I walked into a fabric store – or a grocery store, for that matter. But, like I said, only God knows when our ears are prepped to hear the answers to our Big Questions…and I think sometimes He holds out on us a little while to make us more hungry – to increase our wanting so that, in its fulfillment, we experience the fullness of His Joy.
