shall not want

Our anniversary passed with a fun trip to Pagosa Springs and documenting our third year with photos along Rim Drive near Fort Lewis College. It's a crazy beautiful view of the mountains surrounding Durango up there. 

Then, I turned 27 last week.
I am not too excited about my late twenties. Since my 25th year, life has been a series of hard realities. I am holding out hope for my 30s to be much more promising.
Over this past Christmas break, two parents of the toddlers that I care for at the preschool spoke really important words into my heart. One mother specifically affirmed me for my patience. The other mom noted my kindness. Both instances brought me to tears as I reflected upon them later. For anyone who has known me over the course of my life, patience and kindness are not attributes that come naturally to me. I have a difficult time thinking of myself in those terms and, yet, I want more than anything to be remembered for them. Working with toddlers is definitely a test of my patience and kindness; however, since they are only 2 years old, I really don't expect much from them so I find it much easier for my patience and kindness to endure around them. Perhaps that's the issue: expectations. When expectations are non-existent, I find myself capable of so much more. I thought that having my expectations smashed and beaten into a messy pulp over and over again these past several years would have rid them once and for all from my life! But it has not been so. I think expectations spring partly from dreams and longings and that's how they continue to find their way back into my day to day. Maybe expectations are the results of the way our minds perceive such longing and dreams to come about. The battlefield in the mind. Always fierce and strong. That's where I want to be free. In my mind. To experience thoughts that are no longer caged, small, and unformed. Then, I may live who I truly am.

Once again, my husband and I find ourselves on the edge of another change and transition in our lives. A part of me may always be waiting for the year where life becomes really slow and uneventful, but I think I'm just teasing myself to think that will happen anytime soon. While uncertainty and hot emotions have clouded our vision, we both came to a point on our own time where we decided to take the other's hand and greet the days ahead together. Now, on the dawn of my 28th year of life and our 4th year of marriage, I have one plea which I have found in a song by the lovely Audrey Assad:

I Shall Not Want

From the love of my own comfort
From the fear of having nothing
From a life of worldly passions
Deliver me O God

From the need to be understood
From the need to be accepted
From the fear of being lonely
Deliver me O God
Deliver me O God

And I shall not want, I shall not want
when I taste Your goodness I shall not want
when I taste Your goodness I shall not want

From the fear of serving others
From the fear of death or trial
From the fear of humility
Deliver me O God
Deliver me O God

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,
and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.

// Mary Oliver //