“Your word is a lamp onto my feet and a light unto my path.”
“Sometimes all we’re given is a crappy Bic lighter…”

The blood in my cheeks rises to kiss the water in my eyes.
We are all sitting in this tight wood-paneled room. We’ve come for six weeks to explore our personality, gifts, and strengths.
Finally, it’s the end.
And I still don’t know where I’m going. Still. Even knowing who I am.

“I was hoping to fix myself. Or at least know myself…so I could fix the situation.
And be happy.”
I say it and realize it all at once.
The frustration feels like a rope coiled in my chest.

Haven’t I been here before?

Our facilitator looks at me, knowingly. Nodding. She tells us a story of her father’s 1,000 candle floodlight. How it was so bright she could send signals in the sky to her neighbors. That’s what we want, she says.
I know that’s what I want. Something simple, strong, and luminous.

And then she says, “But sometimes all God gives us is that crappy Bic lighter. You know?–the one that doesn’t always start right.”  Yes, I know. The one that sends a single candle of flame to burst open the dark. And it’s just long enough—barely long enough—to see your fingers, the tips of your tennis shoes, the shadowed face of Someone next to you.

Prayer: In sparks God, You say to follow in darkness is the only true trust. Help me.

Meditation:

Thanks, Naty of HopeCC, my home away from home.