3 Minutes.

Three minutes.  What can I say in the three minutes before I have to start closing up shop, locking the cupboards, and shutting the door on my ninth week of my fifth semester of my time here in Youngstown, OH?  I can say that I just want to be at peace.  I sat on a rock along Wick Avenue for 10 minutes earlier this afternoon, just watching.  Sitting and finding calm in the passing of cars and cool wind blowing on my face.

One small respite from the last nine weeks, to remind me that time is passing quickly and I will be home soon enough.  But today I am here, and God is good, and decisions can wait for just another 10 minutes.

So go outside before it's so cold you'll freeze your bum off.  And sit.  And watch.  And listen.  And pray. And remember that right where you are, God is using you and loving you.  Contentment comes through God alone.  Not by being somewhere else or just getting through this one big project.  There will always be somewhere else and one more project.

So for just a few minutes.  Be still.  And know that He is God.

Who's your Daddy?

Wednesday night I stayed up until 2:30 a.m. studying for a history test.  Finally, I went to bed and was looking forward to the next five hours of sleep, but, alas, it wasn't to be.  As I was laying there I was thinking about whether I know God or I just know about him and this metaphor hit me.  Being a writer, I couldn't allow the idea to go without putting it down on paper, for fear that sleep would erase it...

Imagine growing up without a father.

I love my daddy (sorry mom, I love you just as much, but the analogy calls for a dad).  I hate the thought that one day I will have to go on living without him.  But to never have even known him is a reality I'd hate so much more.

So...imagine growing up without a father, a protector, a daddy, a safe-haven, and a guide.

You've seen everyone else go through life with their old man, from idolizing child to insolent teenager to wandering young adult to full maturity, and you feel what you're missing out on.

All of the good times, the encouraging words, the advice that you sometimes don't understand well until you've ignored it and made the mistake anyway never happen for you.

But you're not bitter that he was never around.  You know he didn't abandon you.  So this man, you've never known, whose absence you've felt your whole life is out there somewhere, and after a lifetime of not knowing where he is or who he is you find out both.  And you seek him out.

What is he like?  What kind of man is he?  Does he know about you?  Love you?  Want to know you?  Will he reject you or accept you?

You walk into a Starbucks (because where else would you meet, really?) after having e-mailed him to set up a meeting and in the corner is sitting a man.  The one thing you've desired all your life and have no idea what to do with when you have it.  Your daddy.  Because all of those questions...they're things that little girls learn growing up.  They know their daddys.

I obviously know my daddy, but I still feel like that grown woman seeing her father for the first time.  Just the daddy I'm realizing I don't know, is my heavenly Father.

I want to know God the way I know my own dad and so much more than that.  For life to be unimaginable without him and so much richer with him.  The way I see other people who have gone through the steps of faith in its infancy to a full and joyful knowledge of God.

I know plenty about God.  I've read the bible, prayed, gone to church and felt some fleeting moments of closeness, but mostly I'm realizing that I don't really know God at all.

So now I get to be a little girl again.  I get to come to my Daddy's arms and find out what two years ago I thought I knew for certain and what two weeks ago I realized I had only pretended to understand.  Now, I get to get to know God.

Feel free to join me.