mish tumbles

I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that.

Everyone you meet has something to teach you.

Back then I’d be lying in bed or walking down a hallway at college, and the realization I was alive would startle me, as though it had come up from behind and slammed two books together. We get robbed of the glory of life because we aren’t capable of remembering how we got here. When you are born, you wake slowly to everything. Your brain doesn’t stop growing until you turn twenty-six, so from birth to twenty-six, God is slowly turning the lights on, and you’re groggy and pointing at things saying circle and blue and car and then sex and job and health care. The experience is so slow you could easily come to believe life isn’t that big of a deal, that life isn’t staggering. What I’m saying is I think life is staggering and we’re just used to it. We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we’re given — it’s just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral. … I’ve wondered, though, if one of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don’t want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgement. We don’t want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn’t remarkable, then we don’t have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims rather than grateful participants.

Relying on God has to begin all over again everyday as if nothing had yet been done

I get so weary trying to love people. It takes everything. Humility can feel like humiliation. Patience feels like losing. Grace can feel like pain.

Do you value God’s presence in your life more than the greatest achievements you could experience in the world?