I don’t know when I stopped taking my own advice or feeling like I needed to be anywhere  else but here. Now.

Here, the permanent present tense, has always been my lane. I’ve always loved that I could dance to my own drum, content and present; able to participate in and enjoy the magic unfolding in ordinary life (see: #QuestForBeauty). I’ve always believed in fully inhabiting a season without regret.

I respect seasons and timing; synchronicity. My clubbing days are over and they were fun but I have no desire to stumble down Long Street in 6inch platform heels (and the subsequent McDonald’s drive thru with throbbing feet) anymore. I was the most content single person I knew and I enjoyed the crap out of that season. I am intimately acquainted with mundane magic. I have no regrets. But lately I’ve noticed I’ve been veering out of my lane.

“Stay in your lane” doesn’t just mean don’t look left or right; it means: *YOU* ARE HERE. It’s fun here, your gifts and blessings and specific conversations with God are here. You understand you (as only you can) and everyone who is trying to understand you is here too. In your own lane you control the speed limit, you decide direction, you get to stop, catch your breath and start over as many times as you need to. Here , You need only answer to the girl in the mirror. Because only she knows what God has whispered in your ear; nobody else has to answer for the Talents.

There

I know that what is mine is looking for me. I work hard so that when my blessings find me they don’t find me unprepared. But I also used to move like someone who wants no regrets in this life. I’ve never been this preoccupied with the future, and it’s stealing from my present joy. I could (and can) hold the future and the present concurrently in my mind and heart. I am a powerful dreamer. I have been known to Know things but I’ve never let the business of knowing distract from what is right in front of me before. I feel myself neglecting my present for a future that hasn’t arrived. This year I spent a lot of potential energy and it was expensive. Lots of 7pm “what-if” evenings (filled with potential) morphing into 11pm “oops, I did neither thing” (task paralysis). Spontaneity was rare, intermittent and brief; as was discipline. The muse tried to visit but I wouldn’t let her in. Looking back I can’t remember what was so important that I couldn’t spare a moment for an old friend. I was too busy being polite, rushing to goodness knows where, to take pretty pictures on my birthday: a tiny thing but I feel wounded by the self betrayal and regret.

The deal is to live my life come what may. Climate not weather. Cyclical predicable Seasons, gradual adaptation, the occasional unexpected storms. Everything I’ve ever been has equipped me to survive everything that will ever come. And when it comes I’ll find that I’ve literally been preparing for it my whole life.

I spent a lot of time freaking out about being in a “serious relationship” because, well,  I’ve never cared this much before (Apologies to my former lovers). and it’s a completely unexpected path to the one I’d imagined for myself.  I’ve been thinking a lot about it in terms of “responsibilities” And I have spent a great deal of time uncharacteristically living in this future place where my current (unqualified) self will be called to be someone’s wife someday. This is an absolutely insane thing to do because (I should know) that one can take something seriously without becoming too serious. I’m just now realising that I get to enjoy being a loving (and loved) girlfriend because that is all that is required of me right now. And more importantly, that is actually what I AM. I’m not a wife in waiting, I’m a girl in love and that’s enough. I cannot spend my time as a sapling terrified that I’m not a mighty oak. “His mercies are new every morning”. And that’s enough for me.

Now

Respectfully, I will no longer be answering any further questions about “what comes next”. You know what I know: that I see where I’m headed and I’m happy to be headed there. I invite my loved ones to join me in the delightful present. I welcome your happiness, enthusiasm and excitement for me, I have thus far received all inquisitiveness with the well-intentioned warmth that it was sent with. I kindly urge you am to refrain from rushing me. When there’s anything to know you will hear it from me (ie right now you are hearing from me: I’m happy and certain and my heart is well liked after). Anything beyond that will be shared when I am ready and not a second sooner. I am firmly tethering my self to the present tense where I am. Where I am always. Always in progress, always worthy, alway belonging, brave and becoming. “You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and stars. YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO BE HERE.”

So here’s to living here and now. To mundane magic. To honouring seasons and celebrating the process, the progress, the failures and everything in between. Because only the present me has saved me, and she will continue to do so again and again.