Edge Spaces

In the first chapter of her book, God in the Yard, L. L. Barkat talks about edge spaces, "where one habitat meets another - where grass gradually gives way to bushes, which fives way to trees or vice versa."

Edge spaces are the places where change takes place, the spaces where one thing slowly becomes another. Small or large, they're spaces where more than one thing lives, where life of different shapes and forms can grow together and become parts of one whole.

I know what edge spaces are because, right now, my life is an edge space.

This is a year spent straddling different worlds. These are worlds filled with different roles, different callings and places and clothing and companions and food and colors and weather. And slowly, ever so slowly, one sort of life is becoming a different sort of life.

I don't like change. I'm bad at it and I don't like it. If it has to happen, I prefer it to come in one compelling, excruciating moment, and then be over. I like my change to leave me sputtering for air despite the pain that causes, because then it's done. No more anticipating, no more waiting and wondering and worrying about what it will be like, what exactly will happen. Just everything, nothing, and the need to get used to the falling sensation.

Instead I have this. A year (plus or minus) filled with small changes, with changes that I can see coming but can't deal with until they happen. A year of anticipation, and not always a good kind.

Walking through this edge space is tiring. On bad days, I get home from work and all I want to do is watch television, because the blinking electronic box is, at least, manageable. I wonder if this time will end, if we're going somewhere or if this is all an elaborate hoax with no reason or purpose. I want more than this awkward water-treading for my daughter: more energy to play with her, more time to spend with her, more of a life to usher her into. Not to mention wanting more for Dave and I.

But right now we're here, in our enforced edge space. It's the jumping off place of a new pilgrimage for us, I think, even though we're not at the place where we can jump off quite yet. And so I try to find the beauty here, in the sad, spiky gift of a year in transition. Because if God is everywhere, then he's here with us as we shuffle through these puzzle pieces and try to build something sturdy.

Even these days have beauty.

Even these days are glorious winged things,

if only I wasn't blinded

from the sideways glint of light

off shiny, feathered wings.