SIMPLICITY

Maybe I’ll go back; with him, with her, with you. Or maybe I won’t and you’ll have to visit me for a change. Stop being so damn far flung. Because I’ll stop traipsing after you at some point — in case you hadn’t noticed, I need to pay attention to life now.

There are people to let down and people to pick up. Gently, of course, always gently.

I don’t wish to be somewhere else all the time — settled is quite alright for the meantime. Settled is in control and decisions and waking up without dread more than once in a blue moon. Settled is rising with the sun was working for 13 hours a day because I want to.

Don’t you see that those family ties are important? Don’t you see that we are the closest thing you’re gonna get to yourself? It took me until last night to realise that I’m the nearest to her, out of all of you — as it should be, as it changes and shifts. But don’t worry, because someone will always be waiting at home for you.

I don’t know how long I’ve been looking down for — hours maybe? Years? I want to sleep but the caffeine that I didn’t want stops me and now I’m writing on napkins. The horizon looks like many things: the end of life as I know it, people I haven’t met, physics and all the places that lie just out of reach. It’s asking me to read on, to keep turning the pages because it’s not done blinding me yet. I forget things, as we all do. I forget numbers. I forget train times and pathways and patterns. But I rarely forget people, or faces, or moments — the places that contained them. I might be remembering them differently every time, but I won’t forget; they look back at me with the light of a thousand suns.

I’m seeing where blue meets white and where sea meets sky.

I’m nervous for the things that haven’t happened yet and nostalgic for the ones that have. This combined with the sandwiches is making me feel slightly sick. Don’t focus on that. Focus on the feeling of flight as you leap from one cliff edge to another. Focus on late afternoon light and swimming in the rain and spilt milk. Focus on anything other than the hands of the clock. Focus on the leaving feeling and how light you feel when you move towards the unknown and the unattempted. Focus on the paper filling up with words, the ones only you can read. I’ll be waiting then, whether it is here or there or nowhere. Waiting for you to land, and to listen. Because people forget listening in this world of talking and instant and immediately.

It took me a while to realise that everything can be said in a silence.

So take care, but I’m going to carry on with my life now.”

We serve such a loving, gracious and generous God. He loves you so much that there isn’t anything He wouldn’t do in order to have a relationship with you. The Bible tells us that sin separates man from God. But God doesn’t want to be separated from us. That’s why He sent His Son into the world—to pay the penalty for sin so that you and I could live in eternity with Him.