SINCEREST APOLOGIES

You wanted a reason, you wanted an apology so here it is:

I’m sorry. I really am. I just can’t do it.

I have tried so many times- both intentionally and without thinking, it is just something I can never seem to do on my own. I can do it if I find accountability among this world but… I do not think this is something I want to be held accountable to. Always settling. Always doubting myself. See, I heard His voice long before I ever heard yours. God either is who he says he is, or he isn’t. Either he is the God who provides, who dreams big, big dreams, who cheers us on from the sidelines, running beside us- or he isn’t at all. I have given 22 years to believing He is all of it. If he was intentional to give me life, then this life he has given me is meant to be intentional. If I am one of His many dreams come true, then I can only conclude that dreams- both ours and His, are some of the dearest things to His heart. I can’t forget that. I won’t forget. I am not willing to give it all up to entertain you, even for a moment longer. I am not willing to settle on anything even if it makes sense, even if it is convenient.

So, I’m sorry. For all the risks I have taken over comfortable chances. For all the opportunities I have passed up to open a door and not just a fleeting moment. You give me a box and tell me to live in it. There is just something about a box that I cannot seem to fit into. Like I wasn’t meant to, like I am too big, too much for the walls you build around me. Maybe I am, and maybe I am okay with that.  It as though you believe safety is the purpose of life, and maybe I am not okay with that.

I am sorry I could not settle and be all that you had hoped I would be, all the things you have tried for years to make me into. I know you’re constantly talking but there came a point where I just had to stop listening. It’s simple really, I just couldn’t hear his voice over yours. His brings me a cup of tea in the snow with a bright, red scarf to wrap around and hold me. Yours keeps me bundled up inside where no tea is needed. Warm and perhaps cozy, but with nothing to fill me or to keep this soul of mine from freezing. I made this choice, I know. I know in order to believe anything about Him I have to believe it all, I had to let you go. I just don’t think the way you want me to live is the way I want to live. Something about you paralyzes me, but where you are absent? It is as though there are no limits. It is like I can dance in places where there is no music. Like flowers blooming in the Sahara Desert. Not just any flowers but roses, daisies, daffodils- all the ones who were told they never belonged suddenly have a place where you are no longer present.

You have known this was coming for a long time. I’ve known it too. There were times I wondered if I had it in me to do this. But each time you came around, I simply could not stand it. I started seeing dead ends where horizons had once been. And I couldn’t forget them. No matter how long or how hard you tried, I always knew there was more. I would remember the horizons and wonder what it looked like? What was beyond it? I had to know then, I have to know now. There were times I thought I could settle for a life in the mountains, where everything bigger than me blocked my view of the horizon. You thought I could too. But you were wrong and so was I. I have learned that climbing mountains leads you to a horizon. And that will never change. So every mountain, every moment that is between me and the horizon? They aren’t barriers I can never cross, they are between here and there. I am willing to take a hike to see the horizon- or even better to be there myself. Don’t tell me I can’t take a hike, because I can. And I will.

Fear? You can forget I even exist, and I will do the same for you.