Semi Circle


The spacebar blinks up at me.

I've opened blogger, maybe for the fifth time in a year. I don't look at it much anymore. I don't want to (or maybe), I want to so badly that I can't bring myself to do it. Too painful.

You see, it's coming not full circle but semi-circle, right now, sitting on the mahogany-tinted tall chairs by the window hightops, staring out at the blue Happy Wok sign contrasting the My Place Bar and Aaron's Furnishing Store with white letters reading com uters. The green and white grande cup just accosted my lips as the barista told me my order was a winner, maybe the best he'd heard in a while (I don't mess around).

It's January, not June. June, almost two years ago, when I had this same order, day after day, studying page after page of an ancient language for a summer class. June, when I was questioning my question's questions, trying to discern why I was made such a way, desperately seeking and seeking and seeking what I was made for.

January, now. January, when I'm four months away from walking across a university stage and receiving a diploma. January, where that June seems like a lifetime ago but at the same time when the end seems closer than my brain can actually comprehend. January, when I've seen the growth but also the decline. January, when I'm in my hometown for an extended period of time for potentially the last time, ever. January, when four months will chew and release me to an unknown place, an unknown job, and unknown future.

I stopped writing.

Back in July of 2015, I made an (in)decision about what I thought about writing: how valid the medium really is, how successful I actually was in the pursuit, (ultimately) how deeply I believed I was called to continue. Not landing in a decision, I simultaneously began my college career and became inundated with the seventeen thousand things buying for my time, taking on seventeen thousand and one of them, for better or for worse.

Do I regret it, this not writing?

My initial response is I simply don't know. I can understand why it happened. I can see what the time was filled with: growth upon growth upon struggle upon realization upon growth growth growth. I'm not the same as those June and July days, and I don't want to go back to some elements that filled them. I've changed, and I've needed to do so.

But was it right to cease the writing? In very tangible ways I won't describe here, I've been faced with the reality with what might have been if I would not have stopped. Very tangibly.

And would that littler version of me be proud of where this me is today? In some ways, 100% yes. In others, 80% no. She wouldn't have guessed the cease-fire of writing, the total blank page, the turing over to other things and new things. Yet her dreams from where she thought she might be and where I am today are a little different.

But is the different bad?

I was sitting on the faded green, floral and wicker rocker that my hallmate turned RA turned roommate had brought. Feet propped up on the firmly soft cube foot-rest, I leaned my head against the cool wall, and my eyes landed on the flimsy papered, fake window view into New York City, framed by the entry way into the kitchen in where it hung. I was struck.

Lord, I want your dreams for me, and not my dreams for myself.

Evermore, it'd been my prayer. Have a conversation, breathe out the prayer. Finish a class challenging my ideas, breathe out the prayer. Leave the car and come back in saying i dont know i dont know i dont know in desperate prayer, still breathe out the prayer. I now had sat, staring through doorways into windows of where I wanted to be and being evermore fervent in prayer that it's His will (not mine) I seek.

The spacebar blinks up at me.

For better or for worse? I think for both, but ultimately for necessary. It's what happened. My deepest concern: was it disobedience to my Lord? In some ways, yes: I think it was. In other ways, no: I think it was not. Dichotomy there? Yes. But I cannot explain more here, more now.

You see, I have come semi-circle.

I'm not completely through my college career. I'm not completely back to a June, seeing the sun and the summer months and sometimes the Son more clearly. But I'm in the end of my newest beginning, the growing, developing, refining, and ultimately not falling down but falling into the arms of my Savior, evermore aware of the need for His grace and the (magnificently) glorious reality of His name, for He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him (thanks, J. Pipes).

Semi-circile, I sit. Semi-complete with some of my dreams, semi-discovering what my true dreams truly are. Seeing that I make (much, much) too many semi-decisions. Discovering that I may evermore feel semi-ready, caught in semi-ideas and facing the reality that I am only semi-free of my sinful tendencies on this earth, waiting for ultimate deliverance through my Savior.

But what has come fully? A full knowledge that I serve the Lord who is not semi, who calls for (much, much) more than semi-obedience. He is what completes our circles in the first place, and I am safe: safely within the circle of this divine plan He is sovereignly weaving.

And there is no place I would rather be, no dream I would rather pursue. It trumps my incessant figuring-it-out, pushing for more, holding on sometime too tightly to the things that I even wish I could improve.

The spacebar blinks up at me, and questions are not totally gone. I know growth still hasn't come full circle and simply won't until we are fully made like Him. But it blinks, and I type one word after another. I take one step before the next. For I know that He is writing a story, He is the one who fills the pages of history.

I must seek this, seek the Word who is life, one word, one spacebar blink at a time.

© 2018 Deborah Hope Shining
(to comment, see red comment link below and to the right 
of "You Might Also Like" images)

0 comments

I definitely don't want this to be a monologue. What are your thoughts? Questions? Ideas?