Timing

So I have this 3-in-1 of Donald Miller books. I bought it on sale, and I'd enjoyed 'Blue Like Jazz'. I had re-read that one, and 'Searching For God Knows What', but never got to the last book.

Warp speed ahead years, to the last couple weeks---
I'm in a reading phase, where I just grab whatever's on the shelves. I didn't think I'd read book 2 of 3, so I started, and while I realized after I began that I had, I decided to finish it.

And now i'm at book 3 - 'Through Painted Deserts'

and it's about leaving, and change....

"I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently..."

"And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?
It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.
I want to repeat one word for you:
LEAVE.
Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will be changed." Donald Miller, 'Through Painted Deserts' (and THAT'S just the Author's Note @ the beginning!)



I've also been thinking about that verse in Zephaniah (3:17). In case you were wondering, my favorite part is "He will quiet you with his love", with the rest "He will rejoice over you with singing" being a close second. These parts are perfect. Life can become very hectic with many thoughts and background noise, and just to know God's love for me is so powerful and amazing that it can quiet my life, it DOES quiet my life as I sigh into the wave of love as it washes over me, again and again. The next part makes me think of a musical, where characters are so full of emotion that they burst into song. I'm pretty sure that if a PERSON sang to me, I'd be a puddle, so knowing that the God of the universe is so emotion-filled over me that He's bursting into song---I'm pretty much dumbfounded (aka "quieted with his love).