Taco Tuesday

I’ve been silent on here a lot longer than I ever meant to be. Almost a whole year. I don’t have any definitive explanation for why. There are lots of excuses I could make, but a big part of it is that I made it too complicated. Like I tend to make most things in life more complicated than they need to be.

Today I was off work and I had this dream of going to a coffee shop and letting someone else make me coffee so I could sit there and have a really prolific writing session with my fiction project.

Instead, I sat there and flipped through several different writing projects. I deleted one, and tapped a few words here and there on another, and tried to edit one more. Then, for a solid ten minutes, I found myself just sipping my coffee and staring out the window at the truly ordinary scene of the world passing in front of me. 

I watched nothing happen on the backside of a Taco Bell. I noticed a cute green chair I would like to have in the tattoo parlor next door. I stared absently at a man sweeping the sidewalk in front of the coin and jewelry store. I wondered if the disc golf store across the street also sells marijuana (not because I want to buy any--I surely do not--but because it looks like they might). I marveled at the way the sun streaming through the tree branches painted shadows across the “coffee” sign outside.

In those moments of observation with coffee cup in hand, I remembered my tendency to over-complicate things. In life and in my writing. I try to force things, to control them, to make them perfect. 

For a couple years now I’ve felt called to pursue something particular in my life. I have actively pursued it, and in the process I have learned just how little control I have over the results. But in the process, I have experienced a deep spiritual awakening that continues to grow. I’m at a point where I am ready to shift my focus onto other pursuits, but what?

That was the prevailing thought I had at that window seat with my coffee today looking at the backside of a Taco Bell in the Tuesday morning light: what now?

I have no idea, but I’m going to continue sitting with the question. In the meantime, I’m still here. And if you’re sitting with a similar question, you are not alone: I raise my coffee cup in communion with you.

“We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)