Okay, so I'm in the middle of a lot of different things right now. I'm trying to get a book published. I'm trying to plan a book festival. I'm also trying to manage my new self-employed life. I'm looking for a new apartment.  If I'm real with y'all, I don't like the middle.

​For me, I like fresh starts. I actually liked the first day of school growing up. I enjoyed going back-to-school shopping, how new my clothes smelled and how neat my school supplies were in my backpack. There's something about the beginning that's fresh and hopeful. My backpack was still shiny. My papers hadn't gotten disorganized and crumbled in my backpack. There were no real tests yet. However, once we got to the middle of the semester, that's when the unsettled feeling for me would always creep in. Homework started piling up. Midterms. My backpack became a war zone filled with crumpled pieces of papers and leftover food wrappers. See, I don't like the middle because the middle is messy.

In life, I've realized we spend a lot of it in the messy middle. We do get new beginnings.  Think baby showers, new jobs, weddings, first day of schools, going to college, etc. The list goes on and on. But the start of something is always short-lived. Many of us though love to stay in the beginning. Why do you think we love weddings?  Last year, I was a bridesmaid in one of my oldest friend's weddings. My favorite moment was watching her walk down the aisle, teary-eyed and content. How amazing that I got to witness the first hours of her marriage. However, we all know marriage is so much more than the wedding. It stretches, hopefully for years, through kids, moves, new jobs, lay-offs, family health issues, death, grief, sickness and the list goes and on and on. No one is watching the middle of marriage. No one is celebrating the parts that aren't filled with fresh flowers, a shiny dress and a perfect ceremony.  Why do you think we love New Year's? There's so much hype. The countdown before midnight. Everyone is excited about the chance to start over, a chance to for new goals and a fresh year with no mistakes made yet. However, there aren't any streamers brought out when we make it to June. No one is shouting and clamoring at midnight. By then, we're just trying to make it one day at a time.

 When I'm in the middle of a lot and it starts to feel overwhelming, that's when I lean towards my faith. Psalms 139 is probably my favorite scripture in all of the Bible. It reads like poetry. In verse 5, it says "You've gone into my future to prepare the way, and in kindness you follow behind me to spare me from the harm of my past. You have laid your hand on me!"  In this particular part of the Bible, David is writing about how there is nowhere we can go to escape the presence of God. He writes that, "If I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me. I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night-- but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day."  

The middle of many aspects of life can get dark: trying to make it through college, waiting for a job to open up, or for our family member to get better after a health scare. While, the beginnings are streamers and bright lights. For me, the middle can be long nights, unanswered prayers, and big questions for God.  Still, the reason I keep coming back to Psalms is that the dark isn't scary for God. It literally says that to God the "night shines as a bright as day." and "darkness and light are the same to you." There is nowhere I can go to escape from God's love, even in the hard parts of the middle because he knows us so intimately. David writes in the same Psalms that, "you perceive every movement of my heart and soul."   Just sit with that for a second. 

So, the middle is messy. It's hard. It's dark. Sometimes it seems like there's no ending coming. I think that's why the twenties are such a rollercoaster. We start out at 21, with the streamers and bright lights, graduating from college, everyone telling us the whole world awaits. Once, we get to the middle, we have some bruises, some scars, some real world problems that have hit us smack in the face. It's not so bright anymore. However, the middle is really what makes us. We learn to persevere through the days that we thought we couldn't. We get to the other side. We gain perspective of what the middle is for. We learn to appreciate the beauty of the whole process-the beginning, the middle and the end. 

I'm about to turn 30 in July and looking in my rearview I can see the whole enchilada of my twenties: the highs, the lows, the fresh starts, the hard middles, and the bittersweet endings. I wouldn't change a moment. I know through every high and low, God was there guiding me. He was helping me gain the wisdom and character I would need for my next beginning. 

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I was listening to a podcast from Sarah Jakes Roberts the other day. She is like my big sister in my head and whenever she drops truth, I know it will stick with me. A young woman in her early twenties was asking for advice about her spiritual walk. She had become a Christian within the last few years and wondered what her next steps should be. Essentially her question was, "Where do I go from here?" 

"I think one of the most dangerous questions that we ask ourselves repeatedly is where I do go from here?" said Jakes. "I think that's a dangerous question to ask because we end up discrediting what here could be trying to teach us. If every time we arrive we're reaching for what's next, how can we ever come to a place of contentment?"

Okay, mic drop right. Jakes said a more powerful question instead to pose, "What is here? What is here for me? Who am I in this here?"

I've been grappling a lot with these questions lately. If I'm honest, I'm a goal-oriented person. Once I achieve something, I'm always thinking about what the next BIG thing is. I have an active imagination, which I guess is good for a writer. So, I could sit and daydream all day about what the next five, ten, fifteen years could look like. I think to some extent we should all set goals for ourselves because it helps us create a vision for what we want our lives to look like. Write them down. Tell a trusted friend. But also, after going through a global pandemic that shutdown the world in a moment's notice---I'm realizing there's very little we can plan or control in life. 

I think we all know that our days are numbered. That life is fragile. That we only have so much time to laugh with our friends, hug our parents, eat our favorite foods (I can't stop craving Tex-Mex lately). But, I also think we can live with a false sense of unlimited time. It makes us focus on what life will be like THEN, instead of right now. 

I think sometimes we want to escape in our minds to the next chapter of our lives because the one we're in right now is tough. We think somehow by daydreaming about the future, it will make today's lessons easier to face. I know this season may be tough for some reading right now, and if that's the case I understand. There have been many seasons in my life that I like to call "eat your vegetables" that I didn't want to go through. I didn't want to eat the vegetables. I wanted the ice-cream and pie days of summer. 

For me, those hard seasons that I toughed it out and learned how to eat my vegetables are the ones I usually grew the most. It reminds me of the Bible verse in Romans 5 that says, "Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope."  Out of suffering we get perseverance, then character and eventually hope.  Many of us want to just skip to the hope part, right? But what if we stuck out the harder days to gain the perseverance we need for the future? What if we let God develop the character we need right now? That way the hope we have later is built on something firmer, greater than it ever could've been if we just skipped this chapter of our lives.

​And while we're focusing on here, God has also been nudging me to focus on more than just myself. I'm also trying to ask who should I serve in this season? Who should I encourage today? Who can I help out? When we're thinking about others instead of ourselves, it also puts our own problems into perspective. It also gives us greater purpose than trying to figure out how to please ourselves that day. 

None of this is easy. That's why I call it "eat your vegetables" because eating your vegetables kind of sucks. But, there's also a reward in focusing on today. Because some of today you may want to remember. What if you want to remember the joke you and your friend laughed about for 20 minutes straight? What if you want to hold onto the lunch you had with you parents because they're getting older and you don't know how much time you'll actually have with them? What if you want to hold onto the person you're becoming right now in this season? 

For me, I know that there's a freedom I have right now that I probably won't have in the future when I'm married and settled with kids. I met up with a couple of friends for breakfast on a Monday the other day, well, frankly just because I could. I know this time I have right now is finite and fragile. I'm trying to hold onto every second and make each day count. 

​I've been watching Pastor Mike Todd's series, "Here is Holy" that dives into this very topic. Check it out if you're interested in learning more about how to be present with here.