The Unknown

The wind circulates around my body. I feel it move against my skin, brushing gently against me as if it knows who I am; perhaps it does. I am standing in my new backyard. I feel my head swivel back and forth like my grandmother’s old clock that tics back and forth in her living room back home, singing loudly when it strikes at the top of the hour. The wheels of boards rolling and shifting on the concrete turn into a white noise that become a nostalgic sense of home that reminds me of my dad and I skating on my neighborhood streets in Michigan. It turns into a soothing song. The breeze touches my face again. It is warm and direct. There is laughter and a sense of calmness as people greet knew faces with conversations filled with new introductions and welcoming questions with thoughts of intrigue.

How did I get here? Through all of this uncertainty that life brings–through the questioning of my life’s purpose, to battling thoughts of anxiousness of my next life decision and ultimately ending up in Ft. Myers, Florida, one week after my college graduation without knowing what it could hold.

I find myself completely surrounded by Gods utter grace in a place that lives so far away from the town I was raised, but yet I feel grounded and deeply found.

I feel transparent and time has ceased to exist in a place where my home now is two bunkbeds shared in a room with two other women of God who call me sister. God’s grace has made it abundantly clear that He calls us into the unknown, into the midst of the uncomfortable. There we can find peace and reassurance in a God who wants you to be bold in His name, in order for His name to be raised above all, which is exactly what we–what I–am called to do.

- Abigail Burke, Ride Nature Leadership Intern