on living water

It was a year ago this day that I wrote about living water. I told you in my college-aged space with my rushing, hopeful words, that I longed for us to carry this living water to each other. I wanted us to bring each other cupped hands filled with that mighty Ezekiel stream. I wanted us to love the people we didn’t yet love with a wild and living water.

Because, I typed, sitting cross-legged on my bed with my hair wet from the post-run shower, “Every living thing that moves, wherever the rivers go, will live.”

Do you ever think, while you sit next to the strangers on the bus on the way to work, that they hunger and thirst for a wilder love? That as they walk through their day, they might drink an iced tea and write emails and go to spinning class, all the while wistful for something bigger?

And you, do you ever do that? Do you ever walk along a street in what feels like the middle of the night, against the silence of stars and flickering stoplights, kicking the sidewalk with your longing? Do you ever find yourself staring out of a window, almost in tears, for no reason other than you don’t know what’s next but you wish it to be big and brave and wild and beautiful?

And do you ever stop in front of your door, frozen to the sidewalk, frozen in all that you think about admitting, but don’t want to? All that you would tell that person, or write in a letter, or sing out to the sky if only you believed you could?

Oh, me too.

Me, too.

In this, my twenty-second year, I stand outside my door. I scuff sidewalks alone after a cocktail or a coffee and think about the possibilities that terrify me. In this, my twenty-second year, I cannot leave church without crying hysterically on the strip of road between the initial right turn and the dangerous narrow left. In this, my twenty-second year, I whisper, “counseling” and “writing” and cross them off and rewrite “history” and “provost” and cross them off again and rewrite, “?” and leave it.

And now I sit, leaning late into the afternoon – and I hear His command: Hilary, give away My water.

Maybe it is that simple. We are weary travelers all, searching for a drink of water. We thirst for the living water flowing from the temple. We look at each other longingly, wondering, where is the drink of water for my weariness?

Maybe it is as simple and as difficult as you and me, traveling along the road, offering each other a drink of living water. In quiet prayers in a cold parking lot. In twenty minutes of laughter in our offices. In dinners and drinks and blog posts and daring greatly for each other. In telling you, dear reader, as scared as I am, that I am vulnerable and new to everything and afraid. In telling each other that some days, you just need to drink deep from a well of living water. That’s all.

Give away my water. 

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Love,
hilary

for when it isn’t time yet

I’ve been thinking about those big dreams we have. Sometimes people call them “the God-sized dreams.” Sometimes we call them wild. Sometimes we call them brave or reckless or even the dumbest thing we’ve ever thought. At some point, I’m guessing you’ve heard yours call out to you, and you’ve said all these things and more about it.

But the moment that we have this dream, even while we resist it and we run away from it? We also start to expect it to arrive. Immediately.

We want progress towards the goal, we want to start running, we want to see the fruits of this big dream we can hardly dare to dream, and all right away.

When we move across the country or the world, when we start the new program or job, when we give up the things that were familiar and safe because we have this dream of becoming something really unexpected and delightful, we unload our bags and think, “Where are you, dream?”

Where is the fullness? Where is the business I’ve successfully started, the website with 3,000 views a day, the advanced degree with a specialization in metabolomics? Where is the person I’ve come to become? I’ve asked this almost every day since I graduated and set off to chase a big dream of writing, a dream of higher education, a dream of wild love. I drive along the same roads piled with melting snow and look at the same sunrise spilling through the black fingers of the trees, and I want to know, Why haven’t I gotten my big dream yet?

Do you think the answer might be, it isn’t quite time?

We weren’t ever promised that we would receive in full what we envision at first. We weren’t ever told that the dream would be anything but a hard, unknown, journey through the deep dark woods and bright fires and sunrises and years.

Rumi says, “When I am silent, there is thunder hidden within me.”

Just because the dream you dream hasn’t come true yet, doesn’t mean it doesn’t live and roar inside you. Just because you must walk through the many years of not knowing how it will come true doesn’t mean that you were wrong about it.

It just means that now is the time for your silence. It just means that now is the time for the thunder to be hidden within you.

Maybe you see people around you who are thundering their dream to the world. Maybe they have the pageviews, the degree, the family, the words, the settledness you crave and envy. Maybe you wonder if that is ever going to be you.

You, too, have thunder hidden within you.

You, too, have a big dream that is worth a thousand years of walking without knowing where.

You, too, with your suitcases and uncertainty, with your waiting and your silence, are in pursuit of a bold, wild kind of dream.

Now is the time for silence as you take shape. Now is the time for listening to your roommates and friends and parents.  Now is the time to make midnight grocery store runs or watching a full season of The West Wing. Now is the time to pray in your car and slam the brakes for a turtle crossing the road.

And when your thunderous dream bursts forth, and you step into the midst of it, it will roar all the brighter.

Love,
hilary