I cannot explain the way or the why of how this happens; but, it happens with regularity and it happens suddenly with slow unraveling upon my waking to begin a day.

I woke up and found myself curious over the word “consecrate”.

“God understands the way to it, and he knows its place.”

‭‭Job‬ ‭28:23‬ ‭ESV

Yesterday evening I adjusted my route. The breeze was without a thick heat and the trees were swaying only slightly as if escorting the predicted storm away.

Gently. Not today.

I’ve been walking this way for most of my grown up life. My saying, “unraveling the day” is an explanation that is for me, succinct.

A great day was Saturday, no other way to describe the time. A college graduation, a daughter and son and family together. It was truly celebratory, memorable like no other before.

I am in between things.

Now waiting for the any moment call, it’s time for baby, we are on our way to the hospital.

We will be grandparents.

I’ve told people when speaking of my resignation after ten years that I’ve got lots of “balls in the air” and that I’m hoping to establish a rhythm, get into a “mojo” of work from home.

Soon I’ll be helping with a baby and still working in some way, using what I’ve learned and hoping to combine it with my faith to help others while gaining just enough income.

Yes, this has been my response to interested individuals who are either thrilled for my new role or who question what on earth is she thinking…no income, no position, no dependable check every month?

I’ve been stuffing it down. People who are skeptics, people who have no faith in leaps of faith like this.

I walked yesterday and saw the sun making shadows on the open field now overgrown with high grass and weeds with fluffed up looking tops reminding me of lace, tiny yellow buds here and there.

I always pause. God is near.

Agree with God and be at peace. Job 22:21

I like the way God lays His light down in layers. Different all the time, different prompts and patterns.

I continued and thought to jog but didn’t.

Felt no need for further self-punishment.

I walked on and changed my path to circle back uphill through every single shady cul de sac.

There was no rush, I took the back way and reversed my pattern, uphill first then downhill the rest of the way on the trail.

The evening drawing nearer as I stepped over the roots forcing through the hard pavement trail, I paused in front of my favorite field and noticed a dandelion.

The sunlight landed on its little circle of soft peach fuzzy head. It stood alone in the high tangle of weeds.

I’m certain it was for me.

I stepped forward, walked with renewed conviction.

I’ll just get up the same way every morning and make each day my vocation.

I’ll go about my day with intentionality and pursuit of God’s ways.

My first journal entry, May 6th?

An intentional life, my prayer.

• Clarity – where to go, what to do, to create, to initiate
• Commitment – go there and see it through, finish what you begin.
• Consecrated- do all of it for God.

I’m not a biblical scholar.

I happen upon wise words and want to understand them, want to have them make me more than what I see, what tiny bit I know of me, I seek to solve the mysteries of me.

To consecrate means to make or declare something holy, to a higher purpose, even a divine one.

Is it possible that all I do means more than a finish, the attainment of a goal, an outcome resulting from input, the result of my knowledge and hands?

It is possible if we believe we are loved by God, created for more than what we can see.

God understands the way to it, this consecrated daily life.

He knows how to make new wine of our old bitter tastes.

He desires to make us vessels of new.

Consecrated is a word mostly found in the Old Testament, difficult to understand, ritualistic often and sometimes about laws and food deemed unfit.

I considered what if I thought of all I do a return of my grace for God’s grace towards me.

What if I returned to God His investment in me through my investment of all I do for Him, a divine ROI?

Perhaps deciding to do everything from a place of love in light of grace bestowed me makes consecration easier to understand.

For it is grace that brought me thus far and grace that has and will lead me on.

Grace like a phone call just now to arrange a meeting, a program seeking my grantwriting knowledge to discuss my alignment with their mission becoming more understood and known.

A phone call I thought might come yet did not with certainty know.

An opportunity no longer hanging up in the air, a ball clutched in the palm of my hand now captive with the possibility to be divinely pursued, my work through God’s hands and my prayer.

A clear expression of God’s love for me in this place of uncertainty layered thickly with faith.

Be persuaded, timid soul, that He has loved you too much to cease loving you. Francois de la Mothe Fe’nelon

I asked God to help me understand what it means to live consecrated and he led me to the Book of Job, a chronicle of a good and godly man who was met by trouble and tragedy that made absolutely no sense at all.

Job never stopped believing in a God that knew all. Job lived a consecrated life, refused to trade his understanding of it all for the possibility of losing what He knew, God.

“For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, while they slumber on their beds,”

‭‭Job‬ ‭33:14-15‬ ‭ESV‬‬

I’m paying more attention to my morning thoughts, less prone to reach for my phone or to jump up quickly from my bed.

There are important and enlightening ways for me to go, not rushing, more resting.

Waiting for His clarity to guide my committed pursuit and to follow His lead, with intentional steps towards what might help someone, less haphazard, though ever imperfect, my pursuit of Holy and divine.

Every morning, grace comes my way and I am learning to listen.

“And I will give him the morning star.”

‭‭Revelation‬ ‭2:28‬ ‭ESV‬‬

To believe and continue.

Consecrated by grace.