The light blue mesh meshed against my pale, Minnesotan-sunless legs which held the tan, slighlty sparkled journal that had come with me when I'd come to Israel.

"I feel like I'm living suspended. Suspended between the end of college but in the tension between that ending and the beginning, the beginning of 'what comes next.'"

You see, it's summer.

Thirty four days ago, I walked across a stage to receive a diploma (cover). A cover symbolizing so much more: how I'd covered my college days with my commitments' overcommitments, covered my dreams with a much more healthy surrender to God's dreams for me, covered some relationships with way too little care, covered new ground and evermore appreciated the ground that God already been faithful to cover for me.

Now nineteen days ago, I'd packed up silver bullet Mazi and drove the hours (compounded by two more hours in which I'd gone three miles because of stop-and-go-traffic with suddenly malfunctioning air-conditioning in the Kentucky heat) to Music City. My sweat covered body arrived at the teal and white home to the first-time-meeting soccer loving roommate, welcoming yellow bedroom lights, and a session of unpacking: unpacking the car, unpacking my many thoughts, unpacking so much of the sorrow of leaving Minnesota, leaving the people and places I'd come to love so dearly. The last three weeks had been some of the most painful of my life, feeling like what I loved was stripped away, stripped clean off, leaving me raw.

Raw, I'd arrived.

Arrived at a nine-week stay at a company that I, three weeks in, have come to love. A nine-week period that is not so much a definite period or inquisitive question mark but more of a space, a deliberate and much needed pressing of a long key into the keyboard. The space motions to an emptiness. Without the space, what comes before and what comes next will be unreadable, but the effort to push through space when what follows is still unknown, when it is pushing straight into a vast whiteness. Not complete. Very unknown. But still moving, spanning each day between what is towards what will be.

Suspended, I sit in the space. No, I live the space.

The only way through is to do.
The only way to go is where He shows. 

I know.
I know the suspended space is a place where I can be receptive to so much of what the Lord is doing like I cannot when the space has moved to the filled forming of the next letter.
I know I can soak in frustrated suspension, or I can dive right into the discomfort of not knowing, of being unsure of six weeks from now and right into the doubt, the doubt that I've done it all wrong I am missing it I will miss it things might come crashing down.

I'm learning that the space actually is the best place, for me, for now.
Because it's right where God has me. Maybe better, it's right where God is with me.

I know.
I know the only way that I'm going to make it through my suspended space is through surrendering to grace.

He's faithful.

And He's calling us to be, too. He's calling us to what He always calls.
You see, my tan journal holds more questions than the question of suspension.

How can I live more radically today?
How can I flee selfishness and the evil desires of youth and spend my life for Christ?
How can I be faithful to what's in front of me, today?
How can I invest in people and be a difference maker?
How can I see the needs around me?
How can I get my eyes off of myself? 

A life surrendered to His grace: His grace for our moments of suspension as we can do nothing more than take one step trusting that He's laid the path in front of us, His grace to remind us of our calling to love Him and love others, His grace to equip us to remember that it's not so much about figuring out "our perfect plan" and "the right move" and "making it all happen." It's just not about us, period. No space. It's about Him, His glory, His Gospel. We are called to surrender to that, to Him, to losing ourselves in making Him known.

In the space, I see He is faithful.
In the space, I see I need to not question why I'm in the space but use other questions to get my eyes of me and onto helping, serving, delighting in Him.

For I am suspended between an end and a beginning, but I know the one who is the beginning and the end. My best end, our best end, is beginning with that, beginning with Him. What simple, sheer, solid grace.

Suspended, I sit in the space. No, I live the space, the place of grace.